Editing Picnic at Hanging Rock (novel) (section)

==={{anchor|The Secret of Hanging Rock}}Excised final chapter===
According to her editor, Sandra Forbes, Lindsay's original draft of the novel included a final chapter in which the mystery was resolved. At her editor's suggestion Lindsay removed it prior to publication.<ref>{{cite web |website=listverse.com| url=http://listverse.com/2013/01/14/deleted-book-chapters/|date=14 January 2013| title=10 Deleted Chapters that Transformed Famous Books|author=Symon, Evan V.}}</ref> Chapter Eighteen, as it is known, was [[List of works published posthumously|published posthumously]] as a standalone book in 1987 as '''''The Secret of Hanging Rock''''' by Angus & Robertson Publishing.<ref>{{cite book | isbn = 9781925416541 | url= https://www.angusrobertson.com.au/books/the-secret-of-hanging-rock-joan-lindsay/p/9781925416541?searchTerm=The%20Secret%20of%20Hanging%20Rock | publisher= Angus and Robertson | title= The Secret of Hanging Rock | author= Joan Lindsay |date = September 2016}}</ref>

The chapter opens with Edith fleeing back to the picnic area while Miranda, Irma, and Marion push on. Each girl begins to experience [[dizziness]] and feel as if she is "being pulled from the inside out." A woman suddenly appears climbing the rock in her underwear, shouting "Through!", and then faints. This woman is not referred to by name and is apparently a stranger to the girls, yet the narration suggests she is Miss McCraw. Miranda loosens the woman's [[corset]] to help revive her. Afterwards the girls remove their own corsets and throw them off the cliff. The recovered woman points out that the corsets appear to hover in mid-air as if stuck in time and that they cast no shadows. She and the girls continue together. The girls then encounter what is described as "a hole in space", by which they physically enter a crack in the rock following a lizard; the unnamed woman disappears into the rock. Marion follows her, then Miranda, but when Irma's turn comes a balanced boulder (the hanging rock) slowly tilts and blocks the way. The chapter ends with Irma "tearing and beating at the gritty face on the boulder with her bare hands."
 
The missing material amounts to about 12 pages; the remainder of the publication ''The Secret at Hanging Rock'' contains discussion by other authors, including John Taylor and Yvonne Rousseau. The suspension of the corsets and description of the hole in space suggest that the girls have encountered some sort of [[time warp (science fiction)|time warp]], which is compatible with Lindsay's fascination with and emphasis on clocks and time in the novel.<ref>{{cite book|last=Lindsay|first=Joan|author-link=Joan Lindsay|date=1987|title=The Secret of Hanging Rock|publisher= Angus & Robertson|location= Australia|isbn= 978-0-207-15550-5}}</ref>