Picnic at Hanging Rock





 I'm happy to announce that we all got out alive today. 

 

After a short drive across from Bacchus Marsh and through the very beautiful town of Woodend, we found ourselves at the location where on Valentines Day in 1900 a bunch of schoolgirls from the nearby Appleyard Girls College and one of their teachers went missing during an afternoon jaunt in the sun at Hanging Rock.

After eating their Vegemite and cheese sandwiches the girls decided to take a stroll up onto the rock before it got dark.  First mistake.  Apparently daylight saving hadn't quite kicked in yet so it started to get dark rather quickly.  One girl returned at dusk in a completely stunned trance and had no memory of what had happened up on the rock and the others did not return.  So the teacher accompanying the group decided to haul her backside up the rock to find the missing girls.  Second mistake.  The lot of them disappeared altogether.  By this stage it was dark so the rest of the group went back to the college and reported the teacher and the group of girls missing.
 

A team of sixteen SES trackers, four search dogs, twenty two police, two FLIR capable helicopters and a search team from International Rescue led by Virgil Tracy mounted a search the following day but found only a used Mars bar wrapper.  The girls and the teacher were never found.

 

Sounds quite unbelievable doesn't it?

 

That's because it is all a load of baloney.  Call me naïve but I actually thought the whole story of Picnic at Hanging Rock was true.  I was saddened to find out today that it is actually a whole load of bollocks.  Joan Lindsay wrote the novel in 1967 which was adapted into a movie in 1975 and Hanging Rock was launched into national and international infamy.  But the story was purely fictional, except for the actual Hanging Rock itself, and even then there's conjecture as to whether the rock 'hangs' or is fully supported from underneath.
 

The boys discovered that Hanging Rock doesn't actually hang. 

 

Nonetheless, the effect of this story is that tourists now flock to the joint, especially on public holidays such as today.  There were hundreds of people climbing all over the thing and having picnics in the beautiful grounds adjoining the Rock.  Families were playing games of cricket and walking along the many fantastic tracks surrounding the area.  It was bedlam. 



Even the Mujahedeen took time out to climb the Rock.



Jack, Jarrah and Fletcher had a wow of a time darting across,

up and down the rocks and through the many crevices between them.

 



The view from up the top was awesome.

 

In a somewhat loose re-enactment of that fateful day in 1900 we scoffed down a bunch of Vegemite sandwiches for lunch and the boys played in the playground for a short while.  We were even lucky enough to see a Koala and her joey climbing through and jumping across the trees!

 

 

Soon enough though we were off in the car for a drive through the picturesque Mount Macedon.  The beautiful drive put Fletch straight to sleep. 

 

It was thus a very peaceful meander home listening to the next instalment of Harry Potter.  I'm pretty sure that Harry Potter is fiction too. 

 

I think that the Hanging Rock experience today must have had an impact on the spirituality and mentality of the family because there was no happy hour today.  In fact no alcohol whatsoever, the first for many months!  A completely unplanned AFD - holy cow!  Something eerie is going on here..

 

And it was an early night to bed for the boys, much to their disgust.  Unfortunately, sweet desserts and late nights have become the norm of late and any deviation from this seems to incite indignant cries of protest and real tears.   It's still a long time before the boys go back to school but there will need to be some serious adjustments made between now and then.  We may need help from forces above to do it.

 

Oh, and apparently there was a horse race on today.