At Appleyard College, a girls' private school, near the town of Woodend, Victoria, Australia, the students are dressing on the morning of Valentine's Day, 1900. Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert), Irma (Karen Robson), Marion (Jane Vallis), Rosamund (Ingrid Mason), waifish Sara (Margaret Nelson), and outsider Edith (Christine Schuler) read poetry and Valentine's Day cards.