I was browsing the modern interweb when I noticed that my watch had stopped. I found myself at a website offering a solution to the mystery contained in the book and film Picnic at Hanging Rock, a mystery story that I hope you’re familiar with – and given the success and longevity of the 1975 film, about a million of you will be. Famously, the mystery is unresolved, leaving it open to literal and non-literal interpretations. But this online solution I’ve found is very intelligent and to its credit is based solely on evidence as presented in the novel’s text. It’s actually superior to the ‘explanation’ that the author Joan Lindsay had included in her original manuscript of the novel and sensibly edited out before the book was published. That ‘explanation’ surfaced in 1987, following Lindsay’s death, but that extra chapter to the book doesn’t so much as answer the mystery as alter the novel’s genre! So I highly recommend Brett McKenzie’s interpretation instead. His solution’s been up on the web for over 10 years but everything begins and ends at exactly the right time and place, ok? His website also includes a summary of the extra chapter and some photos of the rock.
Was that your local branch of the Modern Interweb that you were browsing in?
Hmmm… interesting.
Bloody obvious now.
‘Uuh, I dunno, I was in a stupor at the time’
(hmm, he looks shifty, obviously he’s lying… it wasn’t the modern interweb at all!!)