She spent most of that day trying to write it all down. Credit: Courtesy of The National TrustĪs the cold winter's day wore on, Joan continued to remember the dream of the picnic at Hanging Rock with unusual clarity. Joan told Rae that the dream had felt so real that when she awoke at 7.30am, she could still feel the hot summer breeze blowing through the gum trees and she could still hear the peals of laughter and conversation of the people she'd imagined, and their gaiety and lightness of spirit as they set out on their joyful picnic expedition. The dream had centred on a summer picnic at a place called Hanging Rock, which Joan knew well from her childhood holidays. She knew immediately, she told Rae later that day, that it would make a good book. Joan had woken that morning with the flecked remnants of a peculiar dream imprinted on the edges of her conscious. It was, Joan mused to Rae Clements, their long-term, live-in housekeeper, the perfect day to stay inside and write. In the grim midwinter light, the landscape looked thoroughly dispiriting.

A sinister midnight gale had whipped the few remaining leaves off the old roses in Joan and her husband Daryl's side garden and a huddle of voluminous dark clouds had also moved in, crossing the countryside like black-coated villains in a Victorian Gothic novel. It was the same time she normally started her writing day, but this day felt different. It was 9.30am on a bleak winter's day in 1966 when Joan Lindsay sat down to sketch out the plot of Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Joan lindsay