Three stories of the supernatural are recounted in this anthology. Rick, an Aboriginal boy living near a swamp on Bribie Island, is haunted by an American solider who drowned in quicksand. Ruby and her family live in a house near long-abandoned train tracks, which still carry ghostly apparitions. A landlord has trouble evicting the tenants of an old warehouse: a couple that's been dead for years
Proud and classy Caddie Marsh is forced to get a job as a barmaid and raise two children on her own after her husband walks out on her.
We first meet The Darcys, a poor, working class family of tough Irish stock through whose eyes we hear their story. A story that centres on the bittersweet first and last loves of Roie, who becomes a woman too quickly living among the tenement houses, razor gangs, brothels and sly-grog shops of inner city Sydney.
Like its predecessor The Harp In The South, Poor Man's Orange was also adapted for Australian television by the Ten Network in 1987. It continues the story of the Darcy family, living in the Surry Hills area of Sydney. Originally a novel by New Zealand-born Australian author Ruth Park, the book was published in 1949. The Darcys a poor, working class family of tough Irish stock - Mumma (Anne Phelan), dad Hughie (Martyn Sanderson), Roie (Anna Hruby) and the younger daughter Dolour (Kaarin Fairfax), through whose eyes we hear their story.
