Everyone has heard the line about the Australian wilderness: everything that isn't you wants to kill you. From jacked kangaroos, tiny octopi that could kill you in several minutes, cassowaries that can disembowel you in one kick, a hallmark of Australian culture seems to be how deadly it is. Horror has been prevalent in Australian cinema since the 1970s, with the outback being a primary setting for blood and guts, an isolated gas station or repair shop where a serial killer lures in prey. Mick Taylor of Wolf Creek, for example, knew that it was the perfect place for innocent, ill-prepared backpackers to become stranded in the heat, with him being the only one around for miles to help. If you look at any population map of Australia you'll see it, how the majority of people live around the coastline in cities, with the population shrinking closer to the center. If one finds themselves in that center, getting into any kind of trouble could end up in a life or death situation, especially if the wrong person finds you. It is highly unlikely one will end up in a Wolf Creek situation; as long as you follow very basic rules of survival, letting someone know where you're going, packing sufficient supplies, and avoiding the peak heat of summer, then the bush can be a natural marvel unlike any other. However, don't take this marvel for granted, for those who stray too far from the beaten path could find themselves simply disappearing.

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Picnic at Hanging Rock is a 1975 film directed by Peter Weir, adapted from the book by Joan Lindsay, and is a front-runner of the Australian New Wave of cinema that grabbed the attention of the world in the late 20th century. The girls of Appleyard College take a Valentine's Day trip, and what turns into a day of leisure ends in disaster as three beloved students and one teacher fail to return after exploring deeper into Hanging Rock. They vanish into thin air, where no hound, tracker or search party can find them, with only small pieces mysteriously returning. The rest of the film shows the fallout of this tragedy, how a small school crumbles under the weight of what could possibly be the worst thing that could happen to a school and a community. At a base level, it's something everyone fears, it's a very real fear to have whether you're a child, a parent or a teacher: a disappearance during something as innocent as a school field trip, the panic that ensues when not everyone is accounted for at the end of the day, especially during a time when there were no forms of easy communication, like cell phones. The whole thing spiraling into a media circus of rumors, with all the other students descending into mass hysteria at the loss of their friends as any attempts to find the lost, dead or alive, comes up short. Worst of all, it happens at Hanging Rock, a bizarre geological formation, shrouded with trees, inhabited by all forms of creatures who are incredibly dangerous and too small to notice until it is too late.

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Both the book, and especially through the visual medium of the film, takes real time and effort to portray the beauty and the terror of the eponymous rock. Appropriately for the time it is psychedelic and dreamlike. Time stops existing and those around it are brought into a trancelike state. This is the Australian Gothic, the incomprehensibility of nature, the unique ecosystem that can be terrifying to those unfamiliar. Nature will chew you up and spit you out without remorse if you don't know how to survive it; it'll hypnotize and enrapture you with its beauty, then swallow you whole. Of course, it doesn't do this to everyone, there are those who learned to survive and understand the Australian landscape because they've lived here for 65,000 years. The writer doesn't want to speak over the voices of First Nation's People, those whose voices should really be listened to more, especially when discussing the Australian narrative, but it is important to note the part colonialism plays in this. That things wouldn't be this scary if the right people were listened to instead of trampled. Still, no matter who you are, if you don't keep your head above water, you will drown. Being lost in the wild, especially in the middle of summer, ill prepared, and unable to signal for help, is terrifying. The heat messing with your head and burning your skin, confusing you as every rock and log starts to look exactly the same as the terrain stretches out in front of you forever, no sign of any other person, even if there's a town, or a school, just at the base of the mountain.

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The imagery many know from this movie all come from the first half hour. From when the class departs on horse-drawn carriage to Hanging Rock, to when they come galloping back in a whirlwind of terror, short four people. It is certainly the most descriptive part of the book, with the rest of it reading as an unsolved true-crime story. The 70s film grain and the colors used bathes the picnic in a hazy light, soft browns and yellow-greens stark against the white petticoats of the schoolgirls as they fall into a daze with the sound of cicadas continually ringing in their ears. The watches stop, times stops, and we follow Miranda, Irma, Marion and Edith further up the rock. They're like ghosts wondering through the bushland, and at the same time completely unequipped for their journey, the layered, restrictive white dresses the college requires them to wear are not suited for an Australian summer, especially as the rocks absorb its heat. The youngest, and the only one to come down from the rock at first, Edith, is the only one who feels the true effects of this, becoming nauseous and lethargic as the rest fall into a state of intoxication. We are then put in Edith's shoes as she watches the girls disrobe from their corsets, boots, and petticoats, dancing hypnotized in the sun. She screams after them as they walk further into the treacherous abyss of the rock and subsequently vanish without a trace. As Edith clambers her way back down the rock, to her classmates, feeling the effects of heatstroke in full force, the audience is reminded of the beauty and the terror of the Australian landscape, and how it can take people without warning, and without remorse.

Picnic at Hanging Rock's influence is still seen to this day, from the television series that came out in 2018, to its influence on the fashion world, to the visual inspiration it gave to other stories about dreamy, enigmatic, and doomed women such as The Beguiled and The Virgin Suicides. It is a methodical, hypnotic film about a tragic mystery left unsolved. Many were unsatisfied by this, frustrated by the lack of answers or closure. There are theories and cut drafts, but the book and the film leave the ending open and tragically unsolved. People may voice their dismay at this, as the film crawls on with only fragments of answers, with no one truly remembering or knowing the full story, but that closure would take away from the true horror of the story: That while people and animals have a rhyme and reason, nature doesn't owe you anything at all.