Plot
The girls from Appleyard College, a girls' school in Woodend, Australia, go on a picnic to Hanging Rock on Valentine’s Day, 1900. Three of the girls, Irma, Marion, and Miranda go exloring on the rock and never come back. One of the governesses, Greta McCraw, also disappears mysteriously. The police find nothing until a young Englishman, Michael Fitzhubert, goes searching by himself and discovers Irma unconscious at Hanging Rock. However, Irma can’t remember anything about how she disappeared or anything that happened afterward. Worried parents begin to take their daughters out of school and some of the staff leave as well. A junior governess also leaves Appleyard College with her brother, but both were killed days later in a hotel fire. The youngest student Sara Waybourne vanishes and is found underneath a window, having committed suicide. Mrs. Appleyard, the headmistress, also kills herself by jumping from a ledge on Hanging Rock. The college and the Woodend police station were destroyed by a bush fire a year later in 1901. In 1903, some rabbit hunters found a piece of frilly calico at Hanging Rock, but the Marion, Miranda, and Ms. McCraw were still never found.