Picnic at Hanging Rock depicts the mysterious disappearances of three schoolgirls and their governess on Valentine's Day, 1900. The complex, interwoven narrative charts the subsequent investigation and the event's far-reaching impact on the students, families, and staff of Appleyard College and on the nearby township. Theories abound, long-held secrets are exposed, and paranoia and hysteria set in, as in vastly differing ways their lives are changed...

Set at the turn of the twentieth century, the film concerns a small group of students from an all-female college and a chaperone, who vanish while on a St. Valentine's Day outing. Less a mystery than a journey into the mystic, as well as an inquiry into issues of class and sexual repression in Australian society.