12 Mysterious Facts About ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’

In 1975, one of the most influential and important films to ever come out of Australia was released. Directed by Peter Weir and based on a novel by Australian writer Joan Lindsay, Picnic at Hanging Rock is the story of a group of schoolgirls who head to an Australian landmark for a picnic, and are plunged into a mystery that will change their young lives.

Five decades later, Picnic at Hanging Rock remains a landmark film for the Australian New Wave of cinema, for Weir’s career, and for strange supernatural mysteries. Part coming-of-age drama, part folk horror, and completely spellbinding, it’s a legendary piece of cinema from Down Under. To celebrate its 50th anniversary, here are a dozen facts about how Picnic at Hanging Rock came to be.

1. The movie is based on a book whose story came to author Joan Lindsay in a dream.
2. The book was optioned for just $100. 
3. Lindsay refused to say if the story was true.
4. Producers decided to use the ambiguity to their advantage. 
5. Peter Weir went looking for real schoolgirls to get the film’s sense of “innocence” just right.
6. Two roles had to be recast. 
7. It was filmed in two different Australian states. 
8. Lindsay helped one star with her performance.
9. One scene could only be filmed an hour at a time.
10. Wedding veils helped achieve the film’s look.
11. Weird things really did happen at Hanging Rock. 
12. It was voted the greatest Australian movie ever made.

The movie is based on a book whose story came to author Joan Lindsay in a dream.

Years before Picnic at Hanging Rock became one of the most influential and important Australian films of all time, it was a novel, the brainchild of writer Joan Lindsay. Lindsay had known of Hanging Rock, a rock formation in Victoria, Australia, since childhood, and even had an artwork depicting it; she had wanted to write about the landmark for some time, but it wasn’t until 1966, the year Lindsay turned 70, that the novel came to her.

And “came to her” is an apt phrase in this instance, because according to Lindsay biographer Janelle McCulloch, the specific story arrived at her feet by way of very vivid dreams. It all started with a dream of a summer’s picnic at the Rock, and then continued night after night with such clarity and power that Lindsay rushed every day to write down everything she could remember.

“She would come down from her study each day and say she’d had the dream again,” Lindsay’s housekeeper, Rae Clements, later recalled to McCulloch in a piece published in the Sydney Morning Herald in 2017. “Then she’d discuss the characters and what they were up to. She loved Miranda and the French mistress. Miranda was her favorite character. She was also fond of Albert. She often said, ‘Poor Albert! Poor little Sara!’ She definitely had her favorites.”

In less than two weeks, Lindsay’s dreams had produced a finished draft of Picnic at Hanging Rock. 

The book was optioned for just $100. 

Picnic at Hanging Rock was published in 1967, but it wasn’t until four years later that the film adaptation was set in motion. In 1971, Australian TV presenter Patricia Lovell found the book on a discount rack, bought it, and read it in a single sitting. Convinced it would make a wonderful film, she went looking for a filmmaker to help her pitch the idea to Lindsay, and found her man in Peter Weir, an Australian director in his late twenties whom she’d previously interviewed for a TV job.

Together with Lindsay’s agent, Weir and Lovell went to visit the author, where Weir, who’d been just as taken with the book as Lovell, quickly formed a bond with Lindsay. When it came time to ask for the rights to film the story, Lovell explained that she couldn’t offer much, just $100 AUD (around $1600 AUD or $1000 U.S. today). Fortunately for Lovell and Weir, Lindsay said yes.

Lindsay refused to say if the story was true.

When Weir first began working on Picnic at Hanging Rock, he was warned to avoid asking Lindsay a single question: Was the story true? The novel had played this somewhat ambiguously, suggesting that the events might be true or might at least be loosely based on an actual disappearance at the Rock, though no one had been able to tie the story to a specific real-life incident. Years later, in an interview for the Criterion Collection, Weir revealed that he did ask, and was simply told by Lindsay that she didn’t want to hear the question again.

Screenwriter Cliff Green was also warned not to ask Lindsay, but asked anyway, and got a slightly different answer that helped him put the story into perspective.

“I did ask [Joan] if the story was true,” Green recalled. “Her stock answer was, ‘Some of it is true and some of it isn’t.’ In the end, I decided that fiction and facts had been woven so inextricably together that it was impossible, even for her, to distinguish the difference. Writers use a multitude of threads of reality and fiction to create their stories. As I read the novel, I saw the film unfold; I saw the look of the film immediately. The novel is an incredible filmic piece of work in itself.” 

Producers decided to use the ambiguity to their advantage. 

It took two years for Lovell and Weir to raise the money, from a variety of sources, to film Picnic at Hanging Rock. To help the production along, Weir brought in producers Hal and Jim McElroy, with whom he’d worked on 1974’s The Cars That Ate Paris.

Weir saw Hanging Rock as a mystery film, and played up those elements during filming, but the trouble in trying to sell the movie was that it was a mystery without a clear solution. To balance that concern out, Weir and the McElroys decided that the same “some of it is true and some of it isn’t” ambiguity that drove Lindsay’s novel would serve the film, and added an opening title card suggesting that perhaps what viewers are about to see really did happen. 

Peter Weir went looking for real schoolgirls to get the film’s sense of “innocence” just right.

With funding in place, it was time to cast the film, and Weir quickly found he was running into a persistent problem in casting his ensemble of teenage girls. The girls he was auditioning in Sydney and Melbourne were, he told Criterion, “too sophisticated, too worldly,” and lacked the innocent quality he needed for schoolgirls living a secluded existence in 1900. So he went to South Australia, and began looking for real schoolgirls at private schools in the Adelaide area. It paid off.

“Peter Weir had recruited these lovely, innocent 16-year-old girls out of very expensive schools in Adelaide,” Green said. “But it wasn’t long before many of the girls identified with their roles. I mean, they were hysterical most of the time! But Peter purposely generated that—that level of excitement that those girls showed on the screen. It was genius of Peter Weir to use real schoolgirls—to pick that up and translate it into a film.”

Two roles had to be recast. 

For the pivotal role of Miranda, Weir cast an actress named Ingrid Mason—then found that, for whatever reason, it just wasn’t working out. Rehearsals weren’t giving the director the performance he wanted from the character who was supposed to be the most enigmatic and spellbinding of the whole cast. Mason was moved into the smaller role of Rosamund, one of the other schoolgirls in the film. For the new Miranda, Weir decided on a soap opera actress named Anne-Louise Lambert.

Weir also had to recast the role of Mrs. Appleyard, the stern headmistress of the Appleyard College. Vivien Merchant, the English actress then best known for films like Alfie, was slated for the role, and had even been fitted for wigs, but took ill at the last minute and had to leave the production. She was replaced with Rachel Roberts, who—though she thought it bad luck to wear another actor’s wig—rose to the occasion.

It was filmed in two different Australian states. 

Much of Picnic at Hanging Rock was shot, unsurprisingly, at Hanging Rock itself in Victoria, Australia, but because of financing agreements, Weir and company were also obliged to shoot some of the film in South Australia. Fortunately for them, they stumbled on Martindale Hall, the stately home which doubles as Appleyard College in the film.

“That was OK, because here was this extraordinary building, Martindale Hall … seemingly dropped out of the sky into the middle of the outback,” Weir recalled. “The most incongruous discovery, like an ocean liner, beached, perfect for the film.” 

Lindsay helped one star with her performance.

Because she’d been involved since that very first conversation with Lovell and Weir, Lindsay was welcome on the set of Picnic at Hanging Rock—and in one crucial, almost mystical moment, helped Anne-Louise Lambert to find her footing as Miranda.

As Lambert later recalled, she was taking a break from filming one day, feeling very frustrated that she couldn’t get a particular scene right, when Lindsay appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and offered her somewhat peculiar encouragement.

“I went to hold out my hand, but she walked straight up to me, put her arms around me, and said in a very emotional way: ‘Oh Miranda, it’s been so long!’ She was shaking like a leaf,” Lambert recalled.

“I wasn’t sure what to do, so I said very politely, ‘It’s me, Joan; it’s Anne. It’s so nice to meet you.’ But she dismissed this with a wave of her hand. She just said ‘Miranda’ again and clung to me, so I embraced her back. I think we both started to cry. It was very moving. And it was clear she’d regressed into some part of her past. To her, I really was someone she had known, somewhere in time. Right then, I felt that if Joan Lindsay believed I was Miranda, I must be doing OK. I felt that if she believed in me, I would be OK.” 

One scene could only be filmed an hour at a time.

Shooting at Hanging Rock meant dealing with the elements on a daily basis, and that included the position of the sun on the rocks, the trees, and the rest of the bush around the cast and crew. For the actual picnic sequence in which the girls are congregated around the base of the rock among the trees, Weir and cinematographer Russell Boyd ran into an interesting problem. The light was perfect, and could be augmented with various screens Boyd and his crew set up, but it was only perfect for one hour in the middle of the day. Because the scene in question would have taken a full day of shooting normally, that meant essentially devoting the middle of several days of production to the picnic, with only about an hour at a time when the crew could shoot. Boyd campaigned hard for the risky plan, and Weir agreed, creating an unforgettable sequence that serves as a prelude to the film’s key mysteries. 

Wedding veils helped achieve the film’s look.

To develop the visual style of Picnic at Hanging Rock, Weir and Boyd turned to Lindsay’s own art collection, which was full of impressionist paintings and other nature scenes. They wanted to convey that dreamy, impressionistic feel on film; to pull it off, Weir took inspiration from legendary French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who’d developed a technique of stretching various fabrics across his lenses to diffuse the image. So Weir and Boyd hit up bridal shops and bought wedding veils, which were then stretched over camera lenses to give Picnic at Hanging Rock a dreamy feel. 

Weird things really did happen at Hanging Rock. 

The first thing Lovell and Weir did when they got the rights to the book from Lindsay was visit Hanging Rock, where they both felt an immediate, powerful sense of awe and magic from the landmark. It really did have the feel, right from the start, of being a place of mystery, and that continued through the making of the film.

“Equipment went missing and watches stopped and all of that stuff actually happened,” Hal McElroy said. “I don’t know whether that was just sort of one of those things. Watches do stop, don’t they? I think everybody leaves feeling that there’s something a little bit special and mysterious about that place.”

Though many members of the Picnic at Hanging Rock cast and crew have reflected on the Rock’s eerie feel over the years, one cast member has never had negative feelings about it: Anne-Louise Lambert, who played the missing Miranda.

“I really love the place,” Lambert recalled. “I love being there. I don’t find it, you know, upsetting or scary or any of that. It doesn’t look like any other place you’ve ever been.” 

It was voted the greatest Australian movie ever made.

In 1996, to celebrate 100 years of cinema, the Victorian Centenary of Cinema Committee and the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia organized a poll to determine the greatest Australian movies of all time. Together, critics, journalists, filmmakers, and academics from throughout Australia voted to determine the 100 best films their country had ever produced. The list, published in a 1996 issue of Cinema Papers, includes numerous Australian classics like Mad Max, Muriel’s Wedding, Wake in Fright, The Piano, and more. But only one film was voted No. 1: Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Additional Sources: Peter Weir on Picnic at Hanging Rock (Criterion, 2003), Everything Begins and Ends (Criterion, 2014)

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