Picnic at Hanging Rock is a
1967 Australian historical novel by
Joan Lindsay. The plot focuses on a group of female students at an Australian
women's college in 1900 who inexplicably vanish at the site of an enormous rock formation while on a
Valentine's Day picnic, and also explores the outlying effects the girls' disappearance has on the community. The novel has been often discussed and debated due to its inexorably
ambiguous ending.