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Hanging Rock (also known as Mount Diogenes, Dryden’s Rock,[3] and to some of its traditional owners as Ngannelong[4]) is a distinctive geological formation in central Victoria, Australia. A former volcano, it lies 718m above sea level (105m above plain level) on the plain between the two small townships of Newham and Hesket, approximately 70 km north-west of Melbourne and a few kilometres north of Mount Macedon.
In the middle of the 19th century, the traditional occupants of the place – tribes of the Dja Dja Wurrung, Woi Wurrung and Taungurung – were forced from it.[5] They had been its occupants for, potentially, thousands of years[6] and, colonisation notwithstanding, have continued to maintain cultural and spiritual connections with the place.[4]
To the settler colonialist society, Hanging Rock became a place for recreation and tourism. It came alternately under private, government, and mixed public-private control.[7]
In the late 20th century, the area became very widely known as the setting of Joan Lindsay‘s novel Picnic at Hanging Rock.
