Page "Picnic at Hanging Rock (novel)" Paragraph 7

Appleyard College was to some extent based on Clyde Girls ' Grammar School at East St Kilda, Melbourne, which Joan Lindsay attended as a day-girl while in her teens.

Incidentally, in 1919 this school was transferred to the town of Woodend, Victoria, about 8 km southwest of Hanging Rock.

The book suggests that the fictional site of Appleyard College, given its eastward view of Mount Macedon on the Bendigo-Melbourne Road, might have been on the western side of Calder Highway / Black Forest Drive ( C792 ), about 2 – 4 km south of Woodend.