Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(Aus.) an eccentric individual, esp. one who lives and works alone; occas. of an animal.

1864		J. Rogers New Rush 49: Some days ago a sturdy hatter join’d / His wife and boy at table.
1884		R.L.A. Davies Poems and Literary Remains 267: Oh, a regular rum old stick; [...] he mostly works a ‘hatter.’.
1890		A.J. Vogan Black Police 199: The old ‘hatter’ sits silently smoking.
1898		H. Macilwaine Dinkinbar 70: You talk about carving a cattle-station out of the wilderness [...] You haven’t the hands, sonny; you haven’t the head. You’d turn hatter.
1901		‘Rolf Boldrewood’ In Bad Company 278: Of course if you prefer living here by yourself as a ‘hatter’ – for I’ll never come into it – you may keep it.
1910		C.E.W. Bean On the Wool Track 50: Seeing men so seldom, he came not to wish to see them—a ‘hatter’ they called him for his madness.
1926		M. Forrest Hibiscus Heart 243: It wouldn’t do to become a ‘Hatter’ always mooning away alone.
1930		K.S. Prichard Haxby’s Circus 299: Sometimes it was no more than an opal or topaz, Bach had bought from some old hatter or prospector.
1944		A. Marshall These Are My People (1957) 134: He was about fifty years old and ran a few sheep along the river. ‘I’m a hatter,’ he explained.
1959		H. Drake-Brockman ‘The North-west ladies’ West Coast Stories 160: The chap was a hatter—he started looping the loop.
1965		B. Wannan Fair Go, Spinner 163: There lived in one of the remoter parts of the South Autralian bushland a ‘hatter’—one of those strange, shy hermits of our lonely outback.
1971		F. Hilaire Thanatos 43: They’re the worst kind of queer-hatters.
1986		R. Beckett Dinkum Aussie Dict. 29: Hatter: A solitary bushman, usually half mad.
1999		G. Seal Lingo 161: ‘The Bush Undertaker’, among others, deals with an unhappy, isolated alcoholic soul, known in bush lingo as a hatter. These men lived and worked alone in the bush, often going mad as a consequence.