Up Came a Squatter

Niel Black of Glenormiston, 1839–1880

Maggie Black

• Publisher: NewSouth
• Year: 2016
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781742242521
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

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 of 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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword by Geoffrey Blainey
• 1. ‘A run unequalled in the colony’
• 2. ‘Quietly slaughtered in unknown numbers’
• 3. ‘I sent for a chain to measure the distance’
• 4. ‘Above all, I am anxious for men’
• 5. ‘I thought it best to build a stone house’
• 6. ‘A day we hope never to see the like of again’
• 7. ‘Your uncle is going to be married, as usual’
• 8. ‘To stem the wild torrent of Democracy’
• 9. ‘We are full of corruption from head to foot’
• 10. ‘All efforts to reach agreement have quite failed’
• 11. ‘I dread some fatal catastrophe’
• 12. ‘The crowning folly of my life’
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgements
• Notes
• Index