The overlooked history of Hanging Rock in Victoria

The cinematic version of the book Picnic at Hanging Rock captured the haunting atmosphere of the site but the true Indigenous history conjures its own unique mystery.

It is a sacred Indigenous site for Wurunjderi, Dja Dja Warrung, and Taunarung people.

Hanging Rock kind of looks like an island rising out of farm land, a jumble of caves and granite, and corridors formed by an ancient volcano millions of years ago.

It's base is shrouded in dense eucalypt forest, making it a hard scrabble through the bush up to the towering cliffs above.

The site attracts local and international visitors every year who come to witness the natural beauty and 'mystery' of the place.

"Hanging Rock was supposed to be a spiritual price for our people," Wurunjderi Traditional Owner Annette Xiberras said.

She said traditional ceremonies were held for men at Hanging Rock, while a medicine woman would go and collect mushrooms for medicinal purposes.

"We only ever took what we needed. And we believed that the earth is our mother," Ms Xiberras said.

"On contact or on invasion, we were put on Aboriginal reserves, we weren't allowed to speak the language, we weren't allowed to practice a customs. So a lot wasn't passed down," she said.

Ms Xiberras said there are ongoing land negotiations about Hanging Rock between the Wurunjderi, Dja Dja Warrung, and Taunarung people.

"I think everybody sees it as a very important significant site. And that's why everybody wants to claim ownership to it. Who wouldn't?" she said.

"To us Hanging Rock is a chemist, a university, a supermarket. It's a very important place for us to restart, you know, cultural lessons.

"It's a very important cultural resource here."

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Joan Lindsay's 1967 book is a classic Australian fiction novel about a group of school girls who go on a field trip to the site on Valentines Day in 1901.

In the book, Miranda and some of other girls decide to venture off deep into the bush and explore Hanging Rock. Three girls and one teacher never return.

"Because it's so convincing, there's still a lot of people who think... this party of school girls did disappear," National Film and Sound Archive (NSFA) Curator Jennifer Gall said.

"There were a couple of interesting events in the area historically, that kind of gave [it] weight. There was a child that went missing and a couple of things in the area that contributed to the feeling about Hanging Rock in that area."

The film was directed by Australia's Peter Weir.

"It's an extremely poetic film, I think I would couch it in those terms. It's not like a murder mystery, although that's what it is," Ms Gall said.

"And the landscape itself is a character in the book. It's probably one of the rare Australian films ... that approaches a sense of Indigenous connection with the landscape," she said.

"I think people were kind of blown away by the sophistication of the film, the fact that it didn't hit you over the head with a sledgehammer, there weren't any answers to the mystery," she said.

"So that kind of really hooked people in, in a way that no other film had done."

Ms Gall said even actors in the film talked about "how powerful the energy was around Hanging Rock".

RMIT researcher, Dr Amy Spiers, looked into Hanging Rock and how the book and film deal with themes of white settlement and the Australian Bush.

"Picnic at Hanging Rock does deal with the kind of unease that settler white people have, and so it is that kind of mystery, that haunting" Dr Spiers said.

"It is claimed that we are sort of haunted by our own presence in the kind of Australian landscape."

But Dr Spiers was disturbed by the Picnic at Hanging Rock cult following.

The cult following goes as far as people screaming Miranda's name when they reach the top of the rock, which overshadows the Indigenous history of Hanging Rock.

Dr Spiers started a campaign called 'Miranda Must Go'.

"There's not often conversations about what's some of our more difficult histories like the settlement and the violence that was enacted upon Indigenous people that display dispossession of Indigenous people," she said.

The researcher who has visited the Hanging Rock discovery centre, was shocked that all the information in the centre was primarily about the book and the film.

"It all works to kind of give you a sense that it's a true crime story, and that those girls really did go missing," she said.

Dr Spiers believes reconciliation is at odds with the cult that has developed over the book.

"How upsetting would it be to you to have like, some fictional girls take more precedence in someone's mind?" she said.

"And then the real losses that you've experienced? I mean, how can we have reconciliation with Indigenous people when things like that take place?"

"The campaign was an invitation to think about how those stories function and why we have more of an attachment to these stories than other stories," she said.

Macedon Shires Council said "while Hanging Rock is considered a sacred place for all three groups and was used for ceremonies, meditations, and initiations for at least 10,000 years, a very limited history is known."

"Council respects the right of the Traditional Owner groups to share that information in their own time and way. The three groups have been working on arrangements regarding Hanging Rock, however these have not yet been finalised."

A master plan to guide the future development of Hanging Rock is also being prepared by the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) in partnership with the three Traditional Owner groups.

Dr Spiers remains optimistic however.

"People actually desire Indigenous stories and more understanding of that culture," she said.

Maybe, we can use the book and film as a starting point to learning about the true history of the land.

NSFA curator Ms Gall seems to think so.

"What is the significance of this place to the Indigenous people who were here long, long, long before we were? So I think that's the opportunity in it," she said.

"But the clever and hopefully the positive thing that would happen would be to use the film as that gateway for people to understand, yes, there is an energy here.

"And to understand that ... you need to understand the Indigenous culture of the region and ask the questions of the people who know that."