Picnic at Hanging Rock

by Joan Lindsay

He reminded himself that he was in Australia now: Australia, where anything might happen.

‘Whoever invented female fashions for nineteen hundred should be made to walk through bracken fern in three layers of petticoats.’

‘Whatever can those people be doing down there like a lot of ants?’ Marion looked out over her shoulder. ‘A surprising number of human beings are without purpose. Although it’s probable, of course, that they are performing some necessary function unknown to themselves.’

Everything if only you could see it clearly enough, is beautiful and complete

As always, in matters of surpassing human interest, those who knew nothing whatever either at first or even second hand were the most emphatic in expressing their opinions; which are well known to have a way of turning into established facts overnight.

Out at the Hanging Rock the long violet shadows were tracing their million-year-old pattern of summer evenings across its secret face.

In the noonday stillness all living creatures except man, who long ago renounced the god-given sense of balance between rest and action, had slowed down their normal pace.

‘They were exceptionally intelligent and well-behaved girls who would never have allowed any familiarity from strangers.’ ‘As far as that goes,’ said the detective blandly, ‘most young girls would object to being raped bya drunken seaman, if that’s what you have in mind.’

that everything begins and ends at exactly the right time and place . . .’