The Vanishing at Blackwattle Station
Cup Day, 1983: a family vanishes from their own luncheon. Twenty years on, a renovation finds what was meant to stay buried.
An Australian print-and-play murder mystery for one to six players. Read the case file, question the suspects, name your killer — at your own kitchen table, in an evening.
Get the case — $19.95 →Instant PDF download · Secure Stripe checkout · 14-day refund
A family of three. Gone between lunch and afternoon tea.
Tuesday, 1 November 1983. Melbourne Cup Day. The McKellars set their luncheon table at Blackwattle Station and were never seen again.
The guests arrived at two o'clock to an empty homestead — the kettle cold, three places laid, the wireless still on. No note. No struggle. No bodies. By December the police had closed it: no evidence of foul play. The McKellars went down as missing, and the Western District talked about it for twenty years.
Then, in the spring of 2003, new owners pull up the floor of the old shearing shed — and find four men who'd been buried under the concrete since the early eighties. Local shearers, every one. Men everyone assumed had simply gone west for work.
You are the detective the cold case lands on. Six people who were there. A box of paper — newspaper clippings, a pub logbook, letters, a diary, receipts, an old survey. Everything the first investigation missed is somewhere in the file. Read it the way they should have, and you'll know who did it, how, and why.
It plays fair. Every clue you need is on the page — if you're reading closely enough to catch it.
You don't need anything but the file and an afternoon.
No app. No subscription. No one to post anything to. Buy it once, and it's yours to print and replay.
Download
Three PDFs land the moment you pay.
Print or read on screen
Whatever suits you — paper for a group, screen for solo.
Work the evidence
Comb the interviews, clippings, letters and maps for the slip.
Name your killer
Who did it — and the motive, and the method.
Open the solution
See exactly how close you got, and how it all fits.
Three files. A whole case in your hands.
The dossier
The whole investigation: the police summary, period newspaper clippings, six suspect interviews, letters, diary pages, a hand-drawn map of the property, and the physical evidence.
If you get stuck
Gentle, graduated hints that nudge you toward the answer one step at a time — without ever handing it to you. Use them only if you want them.
The full reveal
Who, how and why — laid out with the evidence trail that proves it, so you can see every clue you spotted and every one you walked past.Don't open this one until you've made your call.
Real pages from the file.
Six people had reason enough. One of them did it.
A neighbour, a country minister, the matriarch next door, a retired headmaster, the local publican, the man who sold the district its hardware. Everyone has something they'd rather you didn't find. A few of the faces you'll sit across from:
Douglas AshworthThe neighbour's son
Wilma PatersonThe matriarch next door
Edwin FraserThe hardware man
Rev. BraithwaiteThe country minister
Arthur MackenzieThe retired headmaster
Hello — I'm Nathan. I publish Morning Post, the daily newsletter you may have read this morning.
Readers tell us the brain teaser and the puzzles are the first thing they turn to each day. So we wanted to make something bigger than five minutes — a proper case you could sit down with on a wet afternoon, or hand around a table after dinner and argue over.
This one's set in our own backyard: the sheep country of Victoria's Western District, in 1983, when a case like this was solved with typed reports, handwritten letters and a publican's logbook — not a database. It's written to play fair. There are three honest red herrings in it, but everything you need to catch the real answer is on the page. No gore — the weight is in the grief and the secrets, not blood.
If our readers take to it, there are more coming. This is the first.
One case. One evening. One killer to catch.
Buy it once and it's yours — print as many copies as your table needs.
The Vanishing at Blackwattle Station
A cold case from the Western District, 1983.
- Instant PDF download — case file, clues & solution
- Print at home or play on screen
- 1 to 6 players · 60–90 minutes
- A fair-play mystery — every clue is on the page
- Australian, written and set in the Western District
Instant PDF download · Secure Stripe checkout · 14-day refund
Before you take the case.
If yours isn't here, email me — I read every reply.
What exactly is a print-and-play mystery?
It's a whole murder case, delivered as a PDF. You read the dossier — police reports, newspaper clippings, suspect interviews, letters and evidence — work out who did it, then check a separate solution file to see how you went. There's no app, no subscription, and nothing to wait for in the post. Print it out and spread it across the table, or read the whole thing on screen.
How many people can play?
Anywhere from one to six. Solo, it's an afternoon with a pot of tea. With a partner it's a different sort of night in. With friends, a book club, or the family at Christmas, print a few copies and let everyone chase their own theory — then compare notes before you open the solution.
Do I have to print it?
No. It reads perfectly well on a computer, tablet or phone. But it's lovely on paper — many people print the case file, three-hole-punch it into a folder, and pass the clippings around. For a group, a printed copy each works best.
How hard is it?
Three out of five — fair, but it makes you work. There are three genuine red herrings designed to lead you astray. Every clue you need is in the file, so a careful reader can absolutely crack it. If you get stuck, the clues PDF gives you graduated nudges without spoiling the ending.
Is it grim or gory?
No. The deaths are handled with restraint — the weight of the story is in old grief and small-town secrets, not blood. It's an adult mystery in the tradition of Australian detective fiction, and it's perfectly at home on the dinner table.
Won't I spoil it for myself?
The solution is a separate file for exactly that reason. Read the case, make your call, then open it. The clues file is also self-contained, so you can take a hint or two without seeing the answer.
Is it Australian?
Through and through. It's set on a sheep station in Victoria's Western District in 1983, written in Australian English, with the texture of the place and the period — Cup Day, the country pub, the wireless, the shearing shed. The characters and events are invented.
What if I'm not happy?
14-day no-questions-asked refund. Reply to your Stripe receipt and we'll sort it within 48 hours.
Who's behind this?
Morning Post — Australia's daily newsletter for grown-ups, read every morning across six capital cities. Published by Just Media Network Pty Ltd (ABN 62 638 812 236).
Twenty years cold. Yours to solve tonight.
One case file. Six suspects. One killer.
The Vanishing at Blackwattle Station
A cold case from the Western District, 1983.
Instant PDF download · Secure Stripe checkout · 14-day refund
The Vanishing at Blackwattle Station is a work of fiction. All characters, names and events are invented; any resemblance to real people or actual events is coincidental. It is a game for entertainment.
Published by Just Media Network Pty Ltd (ABN 62 638 812 236), trading as Morning Post. © 2026.