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