Cirrus@Austlit

'Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, which turns fifty this year, owes a share of its longevity to the modern folklore of vanished white women that has swirled around sites like Hanging Rock in Victoria’s Macedon Ranges since the nineteenth century. Lindsay’s Gothic legend still clings to this unique rock formation. The tale’s enduring appeal and unsettling allure arises from a mist of fact and fiction, casting a magic unspoiled even by the kitsch tourist injunction at Hanging Rock Reserve to ‘Experience the Mystery.’ No matter how often the story is demystified, its ghost lives on in urban legend, with all the appearance of an actual unsolved crime. The mystery lives on in the inescapable question: did it really happen?'  (Introduction)