Friday the 13th

Applications are so over. Finally. Now here comes the interviews. Drove 3 hours to our first interview this morning. It was the perfect sleep-in weather, cold and rainy but we left Clayton at 6.45 am to get to our interview. And got there late! Luckily the interview panel were pretty laidback.

Of course with any trip to the country, we had to do a bit of bush walking. We decided to go to Hanging Rock after the interview. It was quiet and misty. The rain had cleared but the grey skies loomed over us. We were the only ones going up the track.

I could feel my back prick as we ascended the rocks. It was eerily quiet and Bal insisted on going off the track ever so often. Usually I would not think twice about following her. But there was something about the place I could not quite put my finger on. Plus the rocks were slippery. We were also missing our third bush-walking partner, Mel (working woman mah).

Anyway later we found out that in 1900, a bunch of school girls came to this place for a school excursion on Valentine's day. As they were heading back it was discovered that three girls and a teacher had gone missing. No one could find a single trace of them. One of the girls eventually returned and she had no memory of what had happened.

Following this event, the girls back at this private school started to become withdrawn and some girls even lost memory of what had happened. Teachers resigned from their jobs. The school fell apart.

A girl then jumped off a school tower and died. And then the headmistress of the school, in despair, committed suicide at Hanging Rock.

We only knew about what happened at Hanging Rock after we had climbed up the rocks and came down. This really gave me the spooks. What really disturbed me was that this eerie feeling of being watched did not only occur to me but this has occurred others who have travelled through these rocks. Even Bal who is generally wonder-bush-walking-woman-who-has-travelled-alone-to-many-parks felt spooked.

I've been to several national parks, but none of the parks that I climbed ever gave me this spooky feeling. A book was written about this event which was eventually made into the film, A Picnic at Hanging Rock, which has become an Australian classic. What really happened to these girls remain a mystery. There is a theory that they were murdered.

I did take pictures while I was there but I am suddenly not too keen to look at them or post them.

You never know what you may see.