The Squatter

The Squatter

The house is free but it comes with a price... Single mom, Molly Greene, is forced to close her Michelin star restaurant due to the Covid 19 pandemic. To escape the ghosts of her past and the high cost of city living, Molly moves the Greene family to the isolated town of Old Castle where they move into a free-of-charge 200-year-old stately farmhouse...which isn't quite vacant. The Greene family realise they've become unwitting participants in a macabre contest where the farmhouse is first prize...or is it? Little do they know they're sharing their house with a sinister squatter that lingers in the fireplace and likes to come out and play when the sun goes down. Financially broke, Molly decides to go public about the ominous presence in the farmhouse, hoping to cash in on the phenomena, never considering the repercussions of her actions.

Up Came a Squatter

Niel Black, a Scot from Argyllshire, arrived in Melbourne in September intending to make his fortune. Ambitious and determined, Black became one of the most successful and energetic squatters in the Western District of Victoria – a livestock breeder and a Member of the Legislative Council. He was also a correspondent extraordinaire, and his letters to family, fellow pastoralists, colonial officials, and his chief UK business partner, Thomas Steuart Gladstone (and first cousin of the British prime minister), offer a unique insight into the time. Black’s letters and journals, now held at the State Library Victoria, are the inspiration for this revelatory book written by his great-granddaughter. Battles with local Aboriginal people, other settlers, Commissioners of Crown Lands and bush-fires, along with droughts, family feuds, multiple trips back to Scotland to find a wife and Black’s rise to gentrified excess are all vividly brought to life. ‘In this vivid, fast-moving book Niel Black comes to life’ – Geoffrey Blainey

Tallangetta, the Squatter's Home