Children of the Bush | Page 3

final court of appeal when the youngsters had a dispute over a foot-race
at the school picnic, referee at their fights, and he was the stranger's
friend.
"The feller as knows can battle around for himself," he'd say. "But I
always like to do what I can for a hard-up stranger cove. I was a
green-hand jackaroo once meself, and I know what it is."
"You're always bothering about other people, Giraffe," said Tom Hall,
the shearers' union secretary, who was only a couple of inches shorter
than the Giraffe. "There's nothing in it, you can take it from me--I
ought to know."

"Well, what's a feller to do?" said the Giraffe. "I'm only hangin' round
here till shearin' starts agen, an' a cove might as well be doin'
something. Besides, it ain't as if I was like a cove that had old people or
a wife an' kids to look after. I ain't got no responsibilities. A feller can't
be doin' nothin'. Besides, I like to lend a helpin' hand when I can."
"Well, all I've got to say," said Tom, most of whose screw went in
borrowed quids, etc. "All I've got to say is that you'll get no thanks, and
you might blanky well starve in the end."
"There ain't no fear of me starvin' so long as I've got me hands about
me; an' I ain't a cove as wants thanks," said the Giraffe.
He was always helping someone or something. Now it was a bit of a
"darnce" that we was gettin' up for the girls; again it was Mrs Smith,
the woman whose husban' was drowned in the flood in the Began River
lars' Crismas, or that there poor woman down by the Billabong--her
husband cleared out and left her with a lot o' kids. Or Bill Something,
the bullocky, who was run over by his own wagon, while he was drunk,
and got his leg broke.
Toward the end of his spree One-eyed Began broke loose and smashed
nearly all the windows of the Carriers' Arms, and next morning he was
fined heavily at the police court. About dinner-time I encountered the
Giraffe and his hat, with two half-crowns in it for a start.
"I'm sorry to trouble yer," he said, "but One-eyed Bogan carn't pay his
fine, an' I thought we might fix it up for him. He ain't half a bad sort of
feller when he ain't drinkin'. It's only when he gets too much booze in
him."
After shearing, the hat usually started round with the Giraffe's own
dirty crumpled pound note in the bottom of it as a send-off, later on it
was half a sovereign, and so on down to half a crown and a shilling, as
he got short of stuff; till in the end he would borrow a "few
bob"--which he always repaid after next shearing-"just to start the thing
goin'."
There were several yarns about him and his hat. 'Twas said that the hat
had belonged to his father, whom he resembled in every respect, and it
had been going round for so many years that the crown was worn as
thin as paper by the quids, half-quids, casers, half-casers, bobs and
tanners or sprats--to say nothing of the scrums--that had been chucked
into it in its time and shaken up.

They say that when a new governor visited Bourke the Giraffe
happened to be standing on the platform close to the exit, grinning
good-humouredly, and the local toady nudged him urgently and said in
an awful whisper, "Take off your hat! Why don't you take off your
hat?"
"Why?" drawled the Giraffe, "he ain't hard up, is he?"
And they fondly cherish an anecdote to the effect that, when the
One-Man-One-Vote Bill was passed (or Payment of Members, or when
the first Labour Party went in--I forget on which occasion they said it
was) the Giraffe was carried away by the general enthusiasm, got a few
beers in him, "chucked" a quid into his hat, and sent it round. The boys
contributed by force of habit, and contributed largely, because of the
victory and the beer. And when the hat came back to the Giraffe, he
stood holding it in front of him with both hands and stared blankly into
it for a while. Then it dawned on him.
"Blowed if I haven't bin an' gone an' took up a bloomin' collection for
meself!" he said.
He was almost a teetotaller, but he stood his shout in reason. He mostly
drank ginger beer.
"I ain't a feller that boozes, but I ain't got nothin' agen chaps enjoyin'
themselves, so long as they don't go too far."
It was common for a man on the spree to say to him:
"Here! here's five quid. Look after it