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Book of the Week

Joan Lindsay: The hidden life of the woman who wrote Picnic at Hanging Rock
Biography

Joan Lindsay: The hidden life of the woman who wrote Picnic at Hanging Rock by Brenda Niall

Picnic at Hanging Rock, the 1975 film directed by Peter Weir, has achieved iconic status in Australian cinema, while the story on which it is based has also yielded a television drama series, a ballet, plays, and a musical. Indeed, the fiftieth anniversary of the film is being marked by the Sydney Theatre Company’s revival of Tom Wright’s modern adaptation. The story enjoying this long and varied life was originally published as a mystery novel in 1967. Yet the author of that story, Joan Lindsay (1896-1984), is herself something of a mystery. Aged seventy-one at the time of her novel’s publication and scarcely known as a writer, she has received little recognition since.

Interview

Calibre Essays

From the Archive

February–March 1987, no. 88

Self Portrait

When I read fiction I want the words to take my spirit into the places beneath the surface of the everyday world. I want the freshness of dreams to be again revealed to me. I want to know the loveliness and terror of what lies beyond the last star, of what lies sweetly cradled in the blood and juices of the human heart. I long to feel the shock when the tulip spikes the damp soil, feel the blissful impact of the truth, see the glint, the glimmer, the shimmer of another reality. When I read I wish to enjoy the company of the writer and the company of the people and the things in the story, to participate with all of them in the seductive mystery. I desire to be enchanted.

From the Archive

November 2016, no. 386

Dilan Gunawardana reviews 'Wood Green' by Sean Rabin

The cover of Sean Rabin’s first novel, Wood Green, depicts a foggy eucalypt forest at dawn (or dusk), and a ghostly figure in the glow of torchlight. With the added element of the story’s ...

From the Archive

December 2014, no. 367

'Time Watch', a new poem by Tina Kane

Year after year I say I have no time.
Thinking of you now as I pass by the Riverside Cathedral
I remember how year after year we made time for lunch –
you standing under the big vase of flowers where we would meet