Cirrus@Austlit

Joe is unhappy when Jack Mitchell brings an unlikeable shearer known as 'the Lachlan' to their camp. The Lachlan stays with them for the day, then moves on. That night Mitchell tells Joe the tragic tale of Jack Drew, a journalist and sometime gold prospector, and Ruth Wilson, a girl with whom Mitchell was also in love.

Bill Anderson, known as 'Carstor Hoil' because of his habit of drinking machine oil in return for tobacco, is a fourteen or fifteen-year-old larrikin employed at Grinder Bros' Railway Coach Factory. He and his mates torment 'Balmy Arvie', Arvie Aspinall, a lonely boy working with the subcontractor Collins, whose child workers are known as 'Collins's Babies'. When Bill discovers Arvie lives in Bill's old home in Jones's Alley, and that they have a number of other things in common, he becomes Arvie's protector, but his change of heart comes too late.

Mary Wylie longs to escape from her impoverished bush home. Her father is a drunk and a thief and the disgraced family exists as outcasts. A series of misfortunes sees Mary lose her only hope of escape. Her mother dies when she learns the troopers are looking for Tom, her eldest son, and Mary's father brings home another woman. Mary is driven from her home, but has nowhere to go.

When William (Bill) Spencer wags school to go swimming the teacher gives a note to his brother, Joe, and tells him to give it to his father. Bill persuades Joe to throw the note away, but Joe is so troubled by his deception that Bill tries to retrieve the note for him.