Joan Lindsay wrote Picnic at Hanging Rock in two weeks using this typewriter.
Picnic at Hanging Rock continues to mystify the public. The haunting image of the disappearing schoolgirls in the bush intrigues us.
Joan Lindsay would sit on the floor in her ‘scribbling room’ surrounded by drafts of whatever she was working on. Cliff Green – screen writer of the film Picnic at Hanging Rock – tells of how the book was ‘dreamed by Joan every night, and written down the next day in a fever of writing. She made sure she didn’t tell anybody! Because that again was part of the magical qualities she had; she was a magical person.’
Although not a spiritualist or believer in occult mysticism, Joan Lindsay did ascribe to pioneering scientific ideas about the nature of time. These ideas of parallel time, repetition and dimension are present in her most famous novel.
