Hanging Rock
However, when it comes to the Rock, many strange things have happened and it’s not the first time a document I’ve written on it has mysteriously vanished (though I am hoping that this one will eventually turn up.)
I will go on the assumption that it will not turn up but if it does, forgive any duplication.
When I was in my early teens, and the movie Picnic at Hanging Rock was released, I understood that it was based on a true event and more interestingly, my friend’s grandmother remembered the story, though at the time, the speculation was that the ladies had just gone off with some men. On reflection, though, this story doesn’t really make a lot of sense. Nowadays, it’s said that the story is fictional, and it’s worth noting that the author, Joan Lindsay, was born after the said events, though she did claim that the chapters came to her in a series of dreams. The last chapter was deliberately left off the novel in order to give it more intrigue and was published after the death of Joan.
A entry from Wikipedia gives a short summary of this chapter.
While walking past the hanging rock, the girls experience several incomprehensible phenomena. Driven giddy by some supernatural suggestion of the monolith, they throw their corsets over the cliff, though they never fall to the bottom and instead hang in space in an impossible fashion. The girls and Miss McCraw notice a mystical "hole in space". Marion, Miranda, and Miss McCraw transform into small snakes and crawl into a hole in the rock, which another boulder then covers, leaving Irma alone and clawing at the fallen rock.
I don’t live that far from Hanging Rock, which near Woodend and it around a 2 – 3 hour drive. In the late 80s, early 90s, me and a friend of mine visited this area a lot. This was well before I started to understand more of who I was and what my abilities where.
There is no doubt that the area has anomalies in it. During the day it’s quite normal but at night, the energy is very different.
We used to climb the rock at night, when we could get though the gates that were supposed to be locked, and ended up being locked in once, though fortunately I happened to have a hack saw in the car that let us cut through the chain.
The place certainly does appear to attract its fair share of odd people and once the cars we drove up in had battery acid thrown over them during a short climb. On that occasion, the Ranger of the park caught us and told us to leave. I’m not sure who put the acid over the boot, but it was the equinox and there were signs of rituals going on. I had a bad feeling about going in there but my group overrode my foreboding and I went with them. I think it was lucky that there was a Ranger there.
However, strange people aside, the rock and the area do have some seriously strange things about it, some I have had the opportunity to experience myself.
Certainly many events did happen and I am having trouble remembering them all, and interestingly enough, most of what I’ve written about it over the years has gone missing.
I’ll share some stories with you all, though, I’ll be brief with many of them.
One of the interesting ones happened to a friend of mine who I’ll called Paul, went up there with a three other friends. There’s a path the leads to the top of the rock, but instead of taking that, they decided to climb through the caves which are honeycombed throughout the place. They entered into one cave and spend what felt like ages climbing gradually up. Eventually, they came out on the top of the rock and found a large lake. They unpacked their food and eat and watched the fishes swimming around in the water. When they were done, they went back down through the cave network until a while later, they emerged again, oddly enough nearly the top of the rock where the walking track was.
They met someone there who also climbing and they just started chatting and Paul mentioned that he and his friends had just been to where the lake was. The stranger said, there is no lake. And there certainly is none there, I can tell you.
I really think that there’s some kind of nexus there.About Straws Lane
Very near the rock is a road called Straws Lane. It’s a steep hill and cars appear to roll up the hill. If you run, it feels like you’re running downhill when you’re running up. Places like that are dismissed as being an illusion, however there are some things that can’t be easily explained away as illusion.
For instance, the first time I went there, it was close to the Equinox, and there was a definite static in the air. Certainly strong enough for my friend to get a shock through his arm and for me, it was like running your hand over the front of a TV screen.
Magnets seemed to be attracted to the ground.
The weather there was just bizarre. High winds would often spring up, but just moving a few feet away and there would be no wind. Also, at times, the clouds above the area would form a perfect circle with the sky showing through the gap.
Cars tend to sometimes fail and my car certainly started to shake and act oddly when we reached the hill.
Once Paul was with a group of friends there and suddenly this blinding light came on in the fields next to the road. They made a quick exit. However, on the way home, they noticed that a truck was slowing catching up to them. They described it as an unmarked truck. They speed up, and it speed up. And the faster they went, the faster it went until eventually they were driving all out. Paul, who was one of the best drivers I had ever met, saw an exit and suddenly turned into it, stopped the car and turned off the lights and waited for the truck to shoot past. Two of his friends were starring out the back window. However, the truck never appeared.
I don’t know how embellished that story might be because I wasn’t there, but I have little reason to think he had made it up.
One incident that strands out in my mind happened during one of the last times I visited that area.
One night me and Paul drove up there and the trip was uneventful as it normally was. It wasn't until we started to drive up the road leading to Hanging Rock that I began to feel that something wasn't quite right. Yes, of course it was dark and all, but the road almost didn't seem to be real. I don't quite know how to explain it, but my friend felt it too.
Then somehow we missed the gates to the rock. The gates themselves are large and hard to miss, so that was odd within itself. Soon came across a dirt road instead of the sealed one we were driving on. It took me by surprise since I had come a lot further than I thought I had. In fact, I went straight through a give way sign.
"Oh well done," said Paul, "But, I suppose it's late."
"I didn't think that we'd come this far," I said. "Did we pass the gates?"
"We have, but I didn't see them. Nor did I see the sign saying 100 meters to Hanging Rock. This is the dirt track that I once went up with some other friends. We went up it three time and we still couldn't find the gates."
We drove on for a bit and I decided to turn back since the road didn't seem to be going anywhere of interest and my friend was feeling a bit uneasy about continuing. So I drove back and up towards another road called Straws Lane.
The night was mild, the moon was waning, but it still shone plenty of light, and it wasn't windy. But all this changed as we approached the very top of the hill. Suddenly a bitterly cold gale force wind rocked the car, making whistling noises. The sky became pitch black all around the area, except when you looked directly up, it was clear. And a fine rain fell upon my windscreen.
Not that this was really an unusual occurrence for a place that seemed to have cars roll up the hill rather than down, but it did seem a bit more extreme than usual. After a few minutes, we just decided to go back and find the gates to the rock.
We found them on the way back and they were closed. There were times when they were left open, and we’d go in and climb the rock.
"Want to see if the other side is closed too?" asked my friend. "Yes," I replied. So I drove up back up to Straws Lane and turned down the next road which was the other side off the rock.
However, there was something totally wrong about it.
"This is a dirt track. It should be a sealed road," I said.
"I know, go on, continue up it."
I saw the sign that said Hanging Rock Tourist Road, and soon after we came across the gates on the other side
As I drove down the road that led from the gates to Woodend, I saw a car coming towards us. It then turned some distance from us and disappeared. About 200 hundred meters later, I got the where the car had turned. Now I've been up that road many times. It's a straight road with barely any turn-offs. And my friend, who'd been there countless times, would agree with that.
"Left turn, Gary," he said.
I stared incredulously at the road. "There is no ‘T’ intersection on this road," I stated.
"I know," he simply said.
"So why is there one now? And what road was the car on that was coming towards us?"
I turned to the left and the soon made a right hand turn and found myself on the proper road again.
Somehow, the geography of the area had changed, and what was more interesting, only me and my friend remembered the road being straight. The other people I asked who would sometimes come up there with us remembered it as being a T-Intersection.
Those are the main memories I have of Hanging Rock. I’ve not been there in over 15 years and because of my empathy, I hesitate to go there nowadays.
