'The following essay explores the relationship between contrasting cultures
and cultural spaces within a rural Australian, Victorian, context, with reference to the
narrated cultural landscape in Joan Lindsay's novel Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967) and
in the film based on the novel, by Peter Weir (1975). In the analysis of the five first
scenes of the film, the focus will be on the notion of scenic- and human- beauty that is
at once arresting and foreboding, and the various contrasting and parallel spaces that
characterise the structure of book and film. The article will draw from a number of
additional secondary sources, including various cultural readings which offer alternative
methodological approaches to the works analysed, and recorded 1970s interviews with
the author and the filmmaker.' (Author's abstract)