What's Up With the Ending (Spoilers)

I liked it but wonder if they could have condensed it down to 5 episodes with the last one being 1.5 hours. The last 20 or 30 minutes felt drawn out like they were just filling time.

Up to the point where [spoiler]they find Sara's body, everyone's actions make sense, you can clearly see the intention of what they are doing and why. After that what Appleyard does makes no sense, why go see the man who was menacing her instead of getting the hell out of Dodge? And it seems like there's a sudden shift from, "I'm running this school for the daughters of the nouveau riche, burghers of Australia so I can hide out and make money" to "I cared about these girls so much, I'm going to climb a small, dangerous mountain to figure out what happened to them".

It makes even less sense since Miranda threatened to give Appleyard's secret away. (Which given that Appleyard wasn't all that unusual a name, could have been easily dismissed and chalked up to a disgruntled student.) And the loose threads that were left hanging... The doctor's story gets dropped (the way he proposed, it left an impression that maybe he had come to Australia and assumed a new identity too). Does anyone ever think to contact Sara's brother about her death? And how did she die anyway? Did she fall accidentally, was she pushed, or did Miranda's spirit come and take her away from that place?

In the original movie, they left things totally open and ambiguous: was it suicide, alien abduction, aboriginal spirits? Where did the women go? I found the end of this miniseries just too muddy. Enough clues to think you'll get at least a vague but you get no answer at all, and in fact, you just get more confused. [/spoiler]

I'm curious what other people think.