Picnic at Hanging Rock Chapter Summaries

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