Children of the Bush

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Produced by Geoffrey Cowling; gcowling@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au
[ Transcriber's notes: The year of first magazine publication is
shown in the table of contents below. Additional transcriber's
notes, including a glossary, are included at the end of the EBook. ]

Children of the Bush by Henry Lawson

Contents

Send Round the Hat: 1901
The Pretty Girl in the Army: 1901
"Lord Douglas": 1901
The Blindness of One-eyed Brogan: 1901
The Sundowners: 1901
A Sketch of Mateship: 1902
On the Tucker Track: 1897
A Bush Publican's Lament: 1901
The Shearer's Dream: 1902
The Lost Souls' Hotel: 1902
The Boozers' Home: 1899
The Sex Problem Again: 1898
The Romance of the Swag: 1901
"Buckholts' Gate": 1901
The Bush-Fire: 1901
The House that Was Never Built: 1901
"Barney, Take me home Again": 1901
A Droving Yarn: 1899
Gettin' Back on Dave Regan: 1901
"Shall We Gather at the River": 1901
His Brother's Keeper: 1901
The Ghosts of Many Christmases: 1901

SEND ROUND THE HAT

Now this is the creed from the Book of the Bush--
Should be simple and plain to a dunce:
"If a man's in a hole you must pass round the hat
Were he jail-bird or gentleman once."

"Is it any harm to wake yer?"

It was about nine o'clock in the morning, and, though it was Sunday
morning, it was no harm to wake me; but the shearer had mistaken me
for a deaf jackaroo, who was staying at the shanty and was something
like me, and had good-naturedly shouted almost at the top of his
voice, and he woke the whole shanty. Anyway he woke three or four
others who were sleeping on beds and stretchers, and one on a
shake-down on the floor, in the same room. It had been a wet night,
and the shanty was full of shearers from Big Billabong Shed which had
cut out the day before. My room mates had been drinking and gambling
overnight, and they swore luridly at the intruder for disturbing them.

He was six-foot-three or thereabout. He was loosely built, bony,
sandy-complexioned and grey eyed. He wore a good-humoured grin at
most times, as I noticed later on; he was of a type of bushman that I
always liked--the sort that seem to get more good-natured the longer
they grow, yet are hard-knuckled and would accommodate a man who
wanted to fight, or thrash a bully in a good-natured way. The sort
that like to carry somebody's baby round, and cut wood, carry water
and do little things for overworked married bushwomen. He wore a
saddle-tweed sac suit two sizes too small for him, and his face, neck,
great hands and bony wrists were covered with sun-blotches and
freckles.

"I hope I ain't disturbin' yer," he shouted, as he bent over my
bunk, "but there's a cove--"

"You needn't shout!" I interrupted, "I'm not deaf."

"Oh--I beg your pardon!" he shouted. "I didn't know I was yellin'.
I thought you was the deaf feller."

"Oh, that's all right," I said. "What's the trouble?"

"Wait till them other chaps is done swearin' and I'll tell yer," he
said. He spoke with a quiet, good-natured drawl, with something of
the nasal twang, but tone and drawl distinctly Australian--altogether
apart from that of the Americans.

"Oh, spit it out for Christ's sake, Long'un!" yelled One-eyed Bogan,
who had been the worst swearer in a rough shed, and he fell back on
his bunk as if his previous remarks had exhausted him.

"It's that there sick jackaroo that was pickin'-up at Big
Billabong," said the Giraffe. "He had to knock off the first week,
an' he's been here ever since. They're sendin' him away to the
hospital in Sydney by the speeshall train. They're just goin' to take
him up in the wagonette to the railway station, an' I thought I might
as well go round with the hat an' get him a few bob. He's got a
missus and kids in Sydney."

"Yer always goin' round with yer gory hat!" growled Bogan. "Yer'd
blanky well take it round in hell!"

"That's what he's doing, Bogan," muttered Gentleman Once, on the
shake-down, with his face to the wall.

The hat was a genuine "cabbage-tree," one of the sort that "last a
lifetime." It was well coloured, almost black in fact with weather
and age, and it had a new strap round the base of the crown. I looked
into it and saw a dirty pound note and some silver. I dropped in half
a crown, which was more than I could spare, for I had only been a
green-hand at Big Billabong.

"Thank yer!" he said. "Now then, you fellers!"

"I wish you'd keep your hat on your head, and your money in your
pockets and your sympathy somewhere else," growled Jack Moonlight as
he raised himself painfully on his elbow, and felt under his pillow
for two half-crowns. "Here," he said, "here's two half-casers.
Chuck 'em in and let me sleep for God's sake!"

Gentleman Once, the gambler, rolled round on his shake-down, bringing
his good-looking, dissipated face from the wall. He had turned in in
his clothes and, with considerable exertion he shoved his hand down
into the pocket of his trousers, which were a tight fit. He brought
up a roll of pound notes and could find no silver.

"Here," he said to the Giraffe, "I might as well lay a quid. I'll
chance it anyhow. Chuck it in."

"You've got rats this mornin', Gentleman Once," growled the
Bogan. "It ain't a blanky horse race."

"P'r'aps I have," said Gentleman Once, and he turned to the
wall again with his head on his arm.

"Now, Bogan, yer might as well chuck in somethin ," said the
Giraffe.

"What's the matter with the --- jackaroo?" asked the Bogan, tugging his
trousers from under the mattress.

Moonlight said something in a low tone.

"The --- he has!" said Bogan. "Well, I pity the ---! Here, I'll chuck in
half a --- quid!" and he dropped half a sovereign into the hat.

The fourth man, who was known to his face as "Barcoo-Rot," and
behind his back as "The Mean Man," had been drinking all night, and
not even Bogan's stump-splitting adjectives could rouse him. So Bogan
got out of bed, and calling on us (as blanky female cattle) to witness
what he was about to do, he rolled the drunkard over, prospected his
pockets till he made up five shillings (or a "caser" in bush
language), and "chucked" them into the hat.

And Barcoo-Rot is probably unconscious to this day that he was ever
connected with an act of charity. The Giraffe struck the deaf
jackaroo in the neat room. I heard the chaps cursing "Long-'un" for
waking them, and "Deaf-'un" for being, as they thought at first, the
indirect cause of the disturbance. I heard the Giraffe and his hat
being condemned in other rooms and cursed along the veranda where more
shearers were sleeping; and after a while I turned out.

The Giraffe was carefully fixing a mattress and pillows on the floor
of a wagonette, and presently a man, who looked like a corpse, was
carried out and lifted into the trap.

As the wagonette started, the shanty-keeper--a fat, soulless-looking
man--put his hand in his pocket and dropped a quid into the hat which
was still going round, in the hands of the Giraffe's mate, little
Teddy Thompson, who was as far below medium height as the Giraffe was
above it.

The Giraffe took the horse's head and led him along on the most level
parts of the road towards the railway station, and two or three chaps
went along to help get the sick man into the train.

The shearing-season was over in that district, but I got a job of
house-painting, which was my trade, at the Great Western Hotel (a
two-story brick place), and I stayed in Bourke for a couple of months.

The Giraffe was a Victorian native from Bendigo. He was well known in
Bourke and to many shearers who came through the great dry scrubs from
hundreds of miles round. He was stakeholder, drunkard's banker,
peacemaker where possible, referee or second to oblige the chaps when
a fight was on, big brother or uncle to most of the children in town,
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 for me, Giraffe, will yer,
till I git off the booze.

"His real name was Bob Brothers, and his bush names, 'Long-'un,'
'The Giraffe,' 'Send-round-the-hat,' 'Chuck-in-a-bob,' and
'Ginger-ale.'"

Some years before, camels and Afghan drivers had been imported to the
Bourke district; the camels did very well in the dry country, they
went right across country and carried everything from sardines to
flooring-boards. And the teamsters loved the Afghans nearly as much
as Sydney furniture makers love the cheap Chinese in the same line.
They love 'em even as union shearers on strike love blacklegs brought
up-country to take their places.

Now the Giraffe was a good, straight unionist, but in cases of
sickness or trouble he was as apt to forget his unionism, as all
bushmen are, at all times (and for all time), to forget their creed.
So, one evening, the Giraffe blundered into the Carriers' Arms--of all
places in the world--when it was full of teamsters; he had his hat in
his hand and some small silver and coppers in it.

"I say, you fellers, there's a poor, sick Afghan in the camp down
there along the---"

A big, brawny bullock-driver took him firmly by the shoulders, or,
rather by the elbows, and ran him out before any damage was done. The
Giraffe took it as he took most things, good-humouredly; but, about
dusk, he was seen slipping down towards the Afghan camp with a billy
of soup.

"I believe," remarked Tom Hall, "that when the Giraffe goes to
heaven--and he's the only one of us, as far as I can see, that has a
ghost of a show--I believe that when he goes to heaven, the first
thing he'll do will be to take his infernal hat round amongst the
angels--getting up a collection for this damned world that he left
behind."

"Well, I don't think there's so much to his credit, after all," said
Jack Mitchell, shearer. "You see, the Giraffe is ambitious; he likes
public life, and that accounts for him shoving himself forward with
his collections. As for bothering about people in trouble, that's
only common curiosity; he's one of those chaps that are always shoving
their noses into other people's troubles. And, as for looking after
sick men--why! there's nothing the Giraffe likes better than pottering
round a sick man, and watching him and studying him. He's awfully
interested in sick men, and they're pretty scarce out here. I tell
you there's nothing he likes better--except, maybe, it's pottering
round a corpse. I believe he'd ride forty miles to help and
sympathize and potter round a funeral. The fact of the matter is that
the Giraffe is only enjoying himself with other people's
troubles--that's all it is. It's only vulgar curiosity and
selfishness. I set it down to his ignorance; the way he was brought
up."

A few days after the Afghan incident the Giraffe and his hat had a run
of luck. A German, one of a party who were building a new wooden
bridge over the Big Billabong, was helping unload some girders from a
truck at the railway station, when a big log slipped on the skids and
his leg was smashed badly. They carried him to the Carriers' Arms,
which was the nearest hotel, and into a bedroom behind the bar, and
sent for the doctor. The Giraffe was in evidence as usual.

"It vas not that at all," said German Charlie, when they asked him
if he was in much pain. "It vas not that at all. I don't cares a
damn for der bain; but dis is der tird year--und I vas going home dis
year--after der gontract--und der gontract yoost commence!"`

That was the burden of his song all through, between his groans.
There were a good few chaps sitting quietly about the bar and veranda
when the doctor arrived. The Giraffe was sitting at the end of the
counter, on which he had laid his hat while he wiped his face, neck,
and forehead with a big speckled "sweatrag." It was a very hot day.

The doctor, a good-hearted young Australian, was heard saying
something. Then German Charlie, in a voice that rung with pain:

"Make that leg right, doctor--quick! Dis is der tird pluddy
year--und I must go home!"

The doctor asked him if he was in great pain. "Neffer mind der
pluddy bain, doctor! Neffer mind der pluddy bain! Dot vas nossing.
Make dat leg well quick, doctor. Dis vas der last gontract, and I vas
going home dis year." Then the words jerked out of him by physical
agony: "Der girl vas vaiting dree year, und--by Got! I must go
home."

The publican--Watty Braithwaite, known as "Watty Broadweight," or,
more familiarly, "Watty Bothways"--turned over the Giraffe's hat in
a tired, bored sort of way, dropped a quid into it, and nodded
resignedly at the Giraffe.

The Giraffe caught up the hint and the hat with alacrity. The hat
went all round town, so to speak; and, as soon as his leg was firm
enough not to come loose on the road German Charlie went home.

It was well known that I contributed to the Sydney _Bulletin_ and
several other papers. The Giraffe's bump of reverence was very large,
and swelled especially for sick men and poets. He treated me with
much more respect than is due from a bushman to a man, and with an odd
sort of extra gentleness I sometimes fancied. But one day he rather
surprised me.

"I'm sorry to trouble yer," he said in a shamefaced way. "I don't
know as you go in for sportin', but One-eyed Bogan an' Barcoo-Rot is
goin' to have a bit of a scrap down the Billybong this evenin',
an'---"

"A bit of a what?" I asked.

"A bit of fight to a finish," he said apologetically. "An' the
chaps is tryin' to fix up a fiver to put some life into the thing.
There's bad blood between One-eyed Bogan and Barcoo-Rot, an' it won't
do them any harm to have it out."

It was a great fight, I remember. There must have been a couple of
score blood-soaked handkerchiefs (or "sweat-rags") buried in a hole
on the field of battle, and the Giraffe was busy the rest of the
evening helping to patch up the principals. Later on he took up a
small collection for the loser, who happened to be Barcoo-Rot in spite
of the advantage of an eye.

The Salvation Army lassie, who went round with the _War Cry_,
nearly always sold the Giraffe three copies.

A new-chum parson, who wanted a subscription to build or enlarge a
chapel, or something, sought the assistance of the Giraffe's influence
with his mates.

"Well," said the Giraffe, "I ain't a churchgoer meself. I ain't
what you might call a religious cove, but I'll be glad to do what I
can to help yer. I don't suppose I can do much. I ain't been to
church since I was a kiddy."

The parson was shocked, but later on he learned to appreciate the
Giraffe and his mates, and to love Australia for the bushman's sake,
and it was he who told me the above anecdote.

The Giraffe helped fix some stalls for a Catholic Church bazaar, and
some of the chaps chaffed him about it in the union office.

"You'll be taking up a collection for a joss-house down in the
Chinamen's camp next," said Tom Hall in conclusion.

"Well, I ain't got nothin' agen the Roming Carflics," said the
Giraffe. "An' Father O'Donovan's a very decent sort of cove. He
stuck up for the unions all right in the strike anyway." ("He
wouldn't be Irish if he wasn't," someone commented.) "I carried
swags once for six months with a feller that was a Carflick, an' he
was a very straight feller. And a girl I knowed turned Carflick to
marry a chap that had got her into trouble, an' she was always jes'
the same to me after as she was before. Besides, I like to help
everything that's goin' on."

Tom Hall and one or two others went out hurriedly to have a drink.
But we all loved the Giraffe.

He was very innocent and very humorous, especially when he meant to be
most serious and philosophical.

"Some of them bush girls is regular tomboys," he said to me solemnly
one day. "Some of them is too cheeky altogether. I remember once I
was stoppin' at a place--they was sort of relations o' mine--an' they
put me to sleep in a room off the verander, where there was a glass
door an' no blinds. An' the first mornin' the girls--they was sort o'
cousins o' mine--they come gigglin' and foolin' round outside the door
on the verander, an' kep' me in bed till nearly ten o'clock. I had to
put me trowsis on under the bed-clothes in the end. But I got back on
'em the next night," he reflected.

"How did you do that, Bob?" I asked.

"Why, I went to bed in me trowsis!"

One day I was on a plank, painting the ceiling of the bar of the Great
Western Hotel. I was anxious to get the job finished. The work had
been kept back most of the day by chaps handing up long beers to me,
and drawing my attention to the alleged fact that I was putting on the
paint wrong side out. I was slapping it on over the last few boards
when:

"I'm very sorry to trouble yer; I always seem to be troublin' yer;
but there's that there woman and them girls---"

I looked down--about the first time I had looked down on him--and
there was the Giraffe, with his hat brim up on the plank and two
half-crowns in it.

"Oh, that's all right, Bob," I said, and I dropped in half a crown.

There were shearers in the bar, and presently there was some
barracking. It appeared that that there woman and them girls were
strange women, in the local as well as the Biblical sense of the word,
who had come from Sydney at the end of the shearing-season, and had
taken a cottage on the edge of the scrub on the outskirts of the town.
There had been trouble this week in connection with a row at their
establishment, and they had been fined, warned off by the police, and
turned out by their landlord.

"This is a bit too red-hot, Giraffe," said one of the shearers.
"Them ---s has made enough out of us coves. They've got plenty of
stuff, don't you fret. Let 'em go to ---! I'm blanked if I give a
sprat."

"They ain't got their fares to Sydney," said the Giraffe. "An',
what's more, the little 'un is sick, an' two of them has kids in
Sydney."

"How the --- do you know?"

"Why, one of 'em come to me an' told me all about it."

There was an involuntary guffaw.

"Look here, Bob," said Billy Woods, the rouseabouts' secretary,
kindly. "Don't you make a fool of yourself. You'll have all the
chaps laughing at you. Those girls are only working you for all
you're worth. I suppose one of 'em came crying and whining to you.
Don't you bother about 'em. _You_ don't know 'em; they can pump
water at a moment's notice. You haven't had any experience with women
yet, Bob."

"She didn't come whinin' and cryin' to me," said the Giraffe, dropping
his twanging drawl a little. "She looked me straight in the face an'
told me all about it."

"I say, Giraffe," said Box-o'-Tricks, "what have you been doin'?
You've bin down there on the nod. I'm surprised at yer, Giraffe."

"An' he pretends to be so gory soft an' innocent, too," growled the
Bogan. "We know all about you, Giraffe."

"Look here, Giraffe," said Mitchell the shearer. "I'd never have
thought it of you. We all thought you were the only virgin youth west
the river; I always thought you were a moral young man. You mustn't
think that because your conscience is pricking you everyone else's
is."

"I ain't had anythin' to do with them," said the Giraffe, drawling
again. "I ain't a cove that goes in for that sort of thing. But
other chaps has, and I think they might as well help 'em out of their
fix."

"They're a rotten crowd," said Billy Woods. "You don't know them,
Bob. Don't bother about them-they're not worth it. Put your money in
your pocket. You'll find a better use for it before next shearing."

"Better shout, Giraffe," said Box-o'-Tricks.

Now in spite of the Giraffe's softness he was the hardest man in
Bourke to move when he'd decided on what he thought was "the fair
thing to do." Another peculiarity of his was that on occasion, such
for instance as "sayin' a few words" at a strike meeting, he would
straighten himself, drop the twang, and rope in his drawl, so to
speak.

"Well, look here, you chaps," he said now. "I don't know anything
about them women. I s'pose they're bad, but I don't suppose they're
worse than men has made them. All I know is that there's four women
turned out, without any stuff, and every woman in Bourke, an' the
police, an' the law agen 'em. An' the fact that they is women is
agenst 'em most of all. You don't expect 'em to hump their swags to
Sydney! Why, only I ain't got the stuff I wouldn't trouble yer. I'd
pay their fares meself. Look," he said, lowering his voice, "there
they are now, an' one of the girls is cryin'. Don't let 'em see yer
lookin'."

I dropped softly from the plank and peeped out with the rest.

They stood by the fence on the opposite side of the street, a bit up
towards the railway station, with their portmanteaux and bundles at
their feet. One girl leant with her arms on the fence rail and her
face buried in them, another was trying to comfort her. The third
girl and the woman stood facing our way. The woman was good-looking;
she had a hard face, but it might have been made hard. The third girl
seemed half defiant, half inclined to cry. Presently she went to the
other side of the girl who was crying on the fence and put her arm
round her shoulder. The woman suddenly turned her back on us and
stood looking away over the paddocks.

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