Picnic at Hanging Rock Chapter Summaries

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

• St. Valentine’s Day – February 14th, 1900

• Girls are getting ready for the trip to the Hanging Rock

• Mrs A. only person who receives no valentine’s day cards

• Travelled to rock in coach driven by Mr. Hussey

Chapter 2

• Have a picnic at rock

• Watches all stop at 12 o’ clock

• Miranda, Marion, Irma and Edith go for a walk around the rock

• Mike and Albert see the girls crossing the river, and Mike falls in love with Miranda

Chapter 3

• Edith complains about the walk

• Girls except Edith take off their stockings and shoes

• They all fall asleep at the monolith

• They wake up and then girls (except E) start walking further up the rock, behind the monolith

• Edith runs back to the picnic grounds screaming

Chapter 4

Back at the College:

• Sara locked in schoolroom to learn ‘The Hesperus’ poem – can’t memorise it

• Calling out to older brother ‘Bertie’

• Coach supposed to arrive no later than 8, not there – Mrs A. worried

• Finally arrives – Mademoiselle faints of exhaustion

• We find out: Miss McCraw, Marion, Miranda and Irma are missing at the rock

Chapter 5

• Mrs A. tries to keep the girls quiet about the situation

• Edith doesn’t remember anything about what happened at the rock - mysterious

• Constable Bumpher leading the investigation, assistant Jim Grant

• No sign of them even with help of Aboriginal Australian tracker

• Sara devastated

• Mike and Albert interviewed

• Find out Edith passed Miss McCraw in her underwear

• Mrs A. forced to write letters to the parents of the missing girls

Chapter 6

• Mike and Albert friendship – breaking class boundaries

• Mike can’t forget about the girls – keeps seeing swans, thinking of Miranda

• Bloodhound recalled – found no signs of the girls

• Mike decides to go up to the rock alone to find them

Chapter 7

• Mike and Albert go on a trip back to the rock

• Mike stays behind to keep searching for the girls, Albert goes home

• Fights against the power of the rock to search, calling out for Miranda

Chapter 8

• Albert has trouble sleeping – worried about Mike

• Next morning goes out to get him – finds Mike unconscious

• Mike taken back to Lake View with Dr. McKenzie

• Albert finds Mike’s notebook, follows it to Irma Leopold

Chapter 9

• Irma not returning to the College – Mrs. A stressed

• Sara not had tuition paid – Mrs A. threatens her with an orphanage

• Mrs Valange – art teacher – feels bad for Sara, argues with Mrs A. and writes Sara a letter

• Sara misses Miranda

Chapter 10

• Irma remembers nothing about experience on rock

• Irma comes to Lake View

• Mademoiselle engaged to Louis

• Mike still seeing swans – in love with Miranda

Chapter 11

• Irma falls in love with Mike (her saviour)

• Mike abandons Irma – goes on a trip to Northern Queensland and doesn’t say goodbye

• Sara dreams of Miranda

• Irma realises she was in love with Mike since she first saw him, crossing the creek

Chapter 12

• Irma goes back to Appleyard College to say goodbye before she returns to Europe

• Irma sees her classmates in the gymnasium, Sara is strapped to a posture correcting board, they start interrogating her about the events of the rock and start screaming and going crazy

• Mademoiselle slaps Edith

• Chaos stops with the arrival of Tom

Chapter 13

• Mrs A. becomes increasingly stressed

• Reg and Miss Lumley leave the college, they stay in a hotel overnight in Melbourne but it burns down at 3a.m. – they die

• Sara has become ill

Chapter 14

• Mike comes back to Lake View for the day and visits Albert

• We find out Mike has been dreaming about the rock

• Albert is dreaming of his younger sister who he hasn’t seen since the orphanage

• Albert gets a letter from Mr. Leopold with a large check and a note to say thank you for saving Irma

• Albert decides to come with Mike on his tour of Australia

Chapter 15

• Mrs A. tells Minnie that Sara’s guardian (Mr. Cosgrove) is coming to pick her up and asks to look out for him herself

• Mademoiselle comes to ask about Sara, Mrs A. says Mr. Cosgrove took her home that morning and that she helped pack Sara’s things

• Mademoiselle helps clear out her room and notices an unpacked suitcase, and a small portrait of Miranda on the mantelpiece

• The portrait was Sara’s most treasured possession – strange she didn’t take it with her

• Suspicious, Mademoiselle writes a letter to Constable Bumpher

• Mrs A. dreams of leaning over Sara as she begs not to be sent back to the orphanage

• Mrs A. gets a letter from Mr. Cosgrove saying he plans to come pick her up on Easter Saturday – suspicious as we know Mrs A. has said she already left the College

Chapter 16

• We see the letter Mademoiselle wrote to Constable Bumpher – suspicions increasing

• Mr Whitehead is pruning the hydrangeas when he notices a terrible smell and goes to investigate, finding the body of Sara Waybourne with a crushed head

• Mrs Appleyard got dropped off at the police station and then Mr Hussey drove her to a farm near the rock and then she walked to the rock and jumps off, impaling her head on a sharp, jutting rock

Chapter 17

• Clipping from a Melbourne newspaper, 14th February 1913

• The College was destroyed by a bushfire in the summer of 1901

• The ‘College mystery’ will forever remain unsolved