braemar school

(tt) Phil Sumner, my old college mate, teaches at Braemar, an 800 student ecumenical school which was once an exclusive hotel on the side of Mount Macedon. It was previously called Clyde and was founded as a girls school in 1910  Joan Lindsay who went to Clyde  based her novel, "Picnic at Hanging Rock" there.

The school has spread far beyond the original hotel building but I decided to concentrate on this as a more interesting aspect of the college. A pregnant schoolgirl is said to have leaped to her doom from the tower.

The staircase would have led up to the dormitories and is a standard feature of boarding schools at that time

Phil's drama department is housed on the old dining room of the school

And there are rumours of a ghostly weeping woman in one of the storage rooms quite close to this lovely old fireplace