“Whether Picnic at Hanging Rock is fact or fiction, my readers must decide for themselves.”

Joan Lindsay establishes a mood of mystery and intrigue before the story starts; her preface encourages her readers to consider interpreting her fictional story as factual. This encourages readers to become more invested in the journey of the characters, and to feel more immersed in the book’s sinister atmosphere.

“The boarders at Mrs Appleyard’s College for Young Ladies had been up and scanning the bright unclouded sky since six o’clock and were now fluttering about in their holiday muslins like a flock of excited butterflies.”

This passage establishes Civilized Versus Wild Spaces as a key theme; the civilized space of Mrs. Appleyard’s College is characterized as stifling and strict, whereas the wild space of the picnic ground is associated with freedom and relaxation, as is symbolized by the girls being allowed to wear their holiday muslins. Furthermore, the metaphor that casts the girls as excited butterflies yearning to be freed aligns them with the wild space.

“Appleyard College was already, in the year nineteen hundred, an architectural anachronism in the Australian bush.”

The grand building, built in an old, austere, European style, is already outdated. This conveys the college’s allegiance to old-fashioned ways of being; the girls’ lives are governed by strict rules of decorum. Furthermore, the building is characterized as a misfit among the wildness of the Australian bush. This passage alludes to the effort of colonizers to control wild spaces—an effort that, in the college’s case, will prove futile.