Picnic at Hanging Rock Quotes

During a rural picnic, a few students and a teacher from an Australian girls' school vanish without a trace. Their absence frustrates and haunts the people left behind.

Marion: A surprising number of human beings are without purpose, though it is probable that they are performing some function unknown to themselves.

[first lines]
Miranda: What we see and what we seem are but a dream, a dream within a dream.

Miranda: Everything begins and ends at the exactly right time and place.

Ben Hussey: Well Ma'am, the strength of it is this. Three of your young ladies and uh - Miss McCraw are missing - on the rock.
Mrs. Appleyard: What happened?
Ben Hussey: Well now, Mrs. Appleyard, that's just the trouble. Nobody knows what happened.

Mlle. de Poitiers: Ah! Now I know.
Miss McCraw: What do you know?
Mlle. de Poitiers: I know that Miranda is a Botticelli angel.

Miss McCraw: This we do for pleasure, so that we may shortly be at the mercy of venomous snakes and poisonous ants. How foolish can human creatures be.

Irma: Waiting a million years, just for us.

Albert Crundall: I thought the little fat one was gonna take a bath. Some of them are real lookers! Have a look at the shape of the dark one with the curls. Built like an hourglass. And have a guard the last one, the blonde. Oh, she'd have a decent pair of legs- all the way up to her bum.
Michael Fitzhubert: I'd rather you didn't say crude things like that, Albert.
Albert Crundall: I say the crude things; you just think them.

Irma: Sara reminds me of a little deer Papa brought home once. I looked after it, but it died. Mama always said it was doomed.

Sgt. Bumpher: Why didn't you tell us you followed the four girls.
Michael Fitzhubert: Because... I didn't exactly follow them. I just jumped across the creek and walked towards the rock a little way. I was curious. In England young ladies like that wouldn't be allowed to go walking in the forest. Not alone anyway. They were gone by the time I got out of the creek, so I turned back.

Miranda: You must learn to love someone else, apart from me, Sara. I won't be here much longer.

Edith: Blanche says Sara writes poetry- in the dunny! She found one there on the floor, all about Miranda.

Mrs. Appleyard: She hadn't been molested?
Doc. McKenzie: No, no, nothing like that. I have examined her and it's quite intact.

[last lines]
Narrator: The body of Mrs. Arthur Appleyard, Principal of Appleyard College, was found at the base of Hanging Rock on Friday 27 March 1900. Although the exact circumstances of her death are not known, it is believed she fell while attempting to climb the rock. The search for the missing school girls and their governess continued spasmodically for the next few years without success. To this day their disappearance remains a mystery.

Edith: I think I must be doomed. I don't feel at all well.
Marion: I do wish you'd stop talking for once.

Edith: May I come, too, please?
Marion: So long as you don't complain.
Edith: I won't, I promise.
Miranda: And don't worry about us Mademoiselle. We shall only be gone a little while.

Mrs. Appleyard: Good morning, girls.
Girls: Good morning, Mrs. Appleyard.
Mrs. Appleyard: Well young ladies, we are indeed fortunate in the weather for our picnic to Hanging Rock. I have instructed Mademoiselle that the day is likely to be warm, you may remove your gloves once the drag has passed through Wood End. We will partake a luncheon at the picnic grounds near the rock. Once again let me remind you the rock itself is extremely dangerous, you are therefore forbidden of any tomboy foolishness in the matter of exploration, even on the lowest slopes.

Rosamund: What do you think? Miranda, somebody had the nerve to send Miss McCraw a card on squared paper covered with tiny sums.

Miranda: Look! Not down at the ground, Edith. Way up there in the sky.

Mr. Whitehead: There's some questions got answers and some haven't.

Albert Crundall: We'll have to be going soon. It'll be dark before we get back.
Michael Fitzhubert: I'm staying here.
Albert Crundall: You're what?
Michael Fitzhubert: I'm staying here.
Albert Crundall: Here? on the rock?
Michael Fitzhubert: Yes.

Miss McCraw: It stopped at twelve. It never stopped before. Must be something magnetic.

Michael Fitzhubert: I wake up every night in a cold sweat just wondering if they're still alive.
Albert Crundall: Yeah, well the way I look at it is this: if the bloody cop, and the bloody Abo tracker, and the bloody dog can't find them well no one bloody can.

Mlle. de Poitiers: [to Mrs. Appleyard] Madam, something terrible has happened.

Minnie: I feel sorry for them kids.
Tom: The ones on the rock, you mean?
Minnie: Yeah, them too. I was thinking of them other poor little devils. Here at the college.
Tom: Damn! They're all right. Rolling in cash, most of them. Or at least their mothers and fathers are.
Minnie: Some of them are orphans, or wards, and you know.

Sara: Miranda knows lots of things other people don't know. Secrets. She knew she wouldn't come back.

Mlle. de Poitiers: Au revoir mes enfants. Au revoir. Au revoir.

Mrs. Appleyard: [to Miss Lumley] This tragedy is little more than a week old and already three, three mark you, sets of parents have written advising me that their daughters will not be here next term. Now the newspaper have something further to sensationalise about. Newspapers all over the world have headlined our morbid affair Miss Lumley. I mean, you realise that I suppose.

Michael Fitzhubert: Miranda! Miranda! Miranda! Help me!

Edith: Except for those people down there, we might be the only living creatures in the whole world.

Edith: Why can't we just sit on this log, and look at the ugly old rock from here? It's nasty here. I never thought it would be so nasty, or I wouldn't have come!

Edith: Miranda. Miranda. Miranda, don't go up there! Come back!

Edith: Tell us!
Pupil #1: Yes Irma, tell us!
Pupil #2: Tell us, Irma!

Miss Lumley: I believe Mrs. Appleyard's decided you're not to go to the picnic, Sara. That makes two of us.

Miss McCraw: Only a million years ago. Quite a recent eruption really. The rocks all round - Mount Macedon itself - must be all of 350 million years old. Siliceous lava, forced up from deep down below. Soda trachytes extruded in a highly viscous state, building the steep sided mamelons we see in Hanging Rock. And quite young geologically speaking. Barely a million years.

Ben Hussey: Ah, you wouldn't have the time, I suppose, Miss?
Mlle. de Poitiers: Ah, Miranda- your pretty little diamond watch?
Miranda: Don't wear it anymore. Can't stand the ticking above my heart.
Irma: If it were mine, I'd wear it always- even in the bath. Would you Mr. Hussey?