Niel Black, a Scot from Argyllshire, arrived in Melbourne intending to make his fortune. Ambitious and determined, Black became one of the most successful and energetic squatters in the Western District of Victoria. Black's letters and journals, now held at the State Library Victoria, are the inspiration for this revelatory book written by his great-granddaughter.

Maggie Black is a writer whose work up to now has been about development among poor and disadvantaged peoples, including histories of Oxfam and UNICEF (OUP 1992, 1996). This has been a surprisingly useful apprenticeship for a study of her great-grandfather's pioneering life in Victoria, with its themes of exclusion of local Indigenous people, development of farming practices and building a new society.