As the novel progresses, Lindsay shows how the forces of British colonialism have sought to repress, contain, and even obliterate nature. When three schoolgirls and their governess go missing during an excursion to the rock, the local community-which has long viewed the rock as a serene place to gather, eat, read, and laze-must reckon with the rock itself, (and the larger Australian countryside around it) as an imposing, dangerous, and perhaps even vengeful presence. It is enormous, remote, and-in spite of the picnic grounds and privies which have sprung up at its base to make tourists more comfortable-a place of wild, untamed terrain. Hanging Rock is a volcanic formation in Victoria, Australia which was, for tens of thousands of years, a sacred meeting-place for several Aboriginal tribes. Most of our images are sourced automatically, so the book cover shown might be different to the edition we have in stock.The titular setting of Picnic at Hanging Rock is also its central symbol, and the locus of one of its most important themes.

This is a used book in good condition, meaning that it shows signs of wear but has no major defects. This is the story of one of Australia's most famous novels, and the author who kept its secrets until she died. It examines Joan Lindsay's enigmatic life, much of which she kept secret from the world, including her childhood, her complex marriage to Daryl Lindsay of the famous Lindsay family of artists, their enduring love and unconventional bohemian life, and her life at Mulberry Hill, the Lindsays' own Arcadia deep in the Victorian countryside. Beyond the Rock looks at not just the myth of Picnic and how it has become part of Australia's culture, but also the story behind it. The result was Picnic at Hanging Rock, a literary mystery that has endured for half a century. In the winter of 1966, at sixty-nine years of age, Lady Joan Lindsay sat down and wrote a short novel about a group of upper-class schoolgirls from a prestigious ladies' college who disappear while on a country picnic in the summer of 1900. Print Beyond the Rock: The Life of Joan Lindsay and Mystery of Picnic at Hanging Rock

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