The Good Girl's Guide to Getting Lost: A Memoir of Three Continents, Two Friends, and One Unexpected Adventure by Rachel Friedman

Author:Rachel Friedman
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Travel, Special Interest, Literary, Personal Memoirs, Biography & Autobiography, Women
ISBN: 9780553908206
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 2011-03-29T00:00:00+00:00

After a stretch along the picturesque Great Ocean Road, our last tourist stop on the way back to Sydney is Hanging Rock. A well-known Australian novel and, later, a film by Peter Weir tells the story of two girls and a teacher who disappeared here during their school Valentine’s Day picnic in 1900. Carly and I rented it my first week in Sydney, and I had nightmares for days after. The film, with its supremely creepy choral-music soundtrack accompanying whispering young girls with ribbons, white dresses, and feathery hair, climaxes with a haunting image of the lost girls disappearing inside the rock. It summons them like a siren, and they simply climb higher and higher, gloveless because the afternoon sun is warm, holding hands.

There is no evidence that this is a true story, but many cling to its veracity. Something about the place supports this narrative; plus, there is the cryptic Aboriginal belief that the rock has “unfinished business” and thus is best avoided. It was formed six million years ago when lava squeezed through a narrow vent in the earth. From a distance, it’s an unusually shaped rocky outcrop encased by a ring of trees and shrubbery. Up close, it is a maze of nooks and crannies. Carly dives into them, wiggling herself into crevices, while I have daymares about her disappearing. She gives the psychic energy of the place no credence, or assumes it is no match for her own will.

I’m feeling bolder these days, more and more confident in my new Australian surroundings, ready for my upcoming solo backpacking excursion—my first ever. Still, I walk gingerly atop the rocks, declining to insert my limbs into any small spaces. I don’t wish to tempt fate or mess with things I don’t understand, though it seems like I’ve been doing a lot of both lately.

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