The Christmas Find by John Drayton

It was not ‘Happy Christmas Hogan’s’ fault that he was born on the natal day of the Prince of Christianity. He certainly had had no voice in the matter which, it was apparent to him later, if not to his godfathers and godmothers in his baptism, was altogether out of proportion to his prospects and surroundings. But he staggered on under the burden of this inauspicious name, and padded along life’s highway barefooted, until, at seventeen years of age, he awakened to the fact that ten shillings a week — was not sufficient for a young man who hoped, one day, to run a stable of his own, and employ labour at a high rate.

Happy, who was generally known as ‘Tommy’ in the stables, and it was under that name, and by that style and title, that he had successfully won his way into the good graces of pretty Mary Kelly, the little nurse girl who attended to the requirements of the juveniles of his employer’s family. Mary, however, was his own age. At seventeen years, a girl is more of an adult than is a male of the species. It broke Tommy up altogether to find that Mary had a considerable weakness for a big policeman. Tommy was a thoughtful lad, and when not and when not pondering on the folly of his name, he often wondered, in a dreamily speculative way, why he had been born, and whether under different circumstances he might not have been more in touch with the people of the gilded world whose inhabitants were among the patrons of the stable.

Mary was largely mixed up in these fancies of his half-tutored mind, and he thought, at considerable length, how he could establish himself firmly in her affections — how, in fact, he could attain to the dignity of ‘Mr Hogan’ and pass out of the ‘Tommy’ stage for good and all.  Early in 1893 the Eastern Colonies were startled out of the sloth engendered by a long period of depression by the news that the West was rich in gold, and that men tramping the dry and dusty track to the fields were stubbing their toes on giant nuggets, that the precious metal was being unearthed in bucketsful, and that men who, in the cities of Victoria and New South Wales, could not get credit for a glass of beer, were washing their feet in champagne at 25/- a small bottle.

Tommy did not believe all this verbatim, but he took enough of it in to satisfy him that there was something in the reports, and after long and serious communion with himself, he decided to draw his few pounds from the Savings Bank and start out to try his luck. A brief interview with Mary preceded his departure, and they solemnly bargained that, if he returned rich within a few years, she would marry him, and he would buy the stable, get in a few good horses, and eventually blossom into a sport, whose colours might one day be the first past the post in a Derby or Cup — perhaps a Derby and Cup, for, as Tommy explained, that was within the region of possibility, inasmuch as he meant to buy only the best of stock and race on the dead square.

Next day he was on the water, and a month afterwards, on Christmas Day, trod the streets of Fremantle for the first time. And as he walked towards the railway station, thinking on his chances, he saw lying on the path before him. and right in the way of pedestrians. a sovereign. He swooped down on it like a sparrow hawk on a chicken, and after testing it with his teeth, dropped it into his pocket chuckling.

“Gold, first time, Christmas Find”

By gee! that’s what I’ll call it —when I find it. I’m goin’ to find something good, afore I go back. I wish’t I could get a tip where to go first. But I must get to Coolgardie, anyhow — that’s where the stuff is. Like all Easterners, Tommy regarded this centre as the Alpha, if not also the Omega, of the gold-hunter’s wanderings, and that night, as he lay down to sleep in a shed at the back of the Freemason’s Hotel, ‘Coolgardie’ was the last word he muttered before he slipped into dreamland, and there he dreamt of an awful spectacle. He dreamt –

By the edge of what had been a soak, but was now sand baking in the burning air, lay a corpse — in no way repulsive, for decay had been arrested, and the remains preserved by the dry process of natures mummifying of the dead in the glare of the sun and the heat of the sand. One bony hand, over which the tightened skin was drawn hard and smooth, pointed to the north — the other, half-buried, lay clenched in the sand. Tommy was in no way shocked. It was an uncommon sight, and he was in a strange country, yet it did not seem strange nor out of place, nor too was he at all surprised when the corpse sat up and spoke.

‘Wots your name?’ asked the corpse, ‘Happy Christmas Hogan,’ he replied

was the reply. ‘Wots yours?’ ‘Oh, I ain’t got one now. I’m a corpse— a deceased — a late lamented.’ And he laughed hollowly, ‘Been dead long?’ asked Tommy. ‘Yes, six months or so,’ ‘Can’t yon take anything for it’ ‘Eh !’ howled the remains. ‘I mean — well, I don’t mean that— say, what’s it like being dead?’ queried the living man. ‘All right — w’en you get used to it. But what are you after?’ ‘Gold,’ was the prompt reply. ‘Right. I’ll show you where’s there’s plenty of it And I’ll tell you how to get it.’ ‘Good enough,’ commented Tommy. ‘On one condition,’ continued the remains. ‘Wot’s that?’ ‘You’ll have to take me back to Sydney and bury me decently. And once a year you’ll have to come and sit and smoke a pipe at midnight on my grave.’ ‘That’s a pretty tough contract, ain’t it ?’ asked Tommy. ‘No, it ain’t much,’ said the prospector. ‘I’ll do it, only thing I be against it is if the police catch me prowling about the cemetery at that time of night, they’ll run me in.’

The Unlucky Prospector

‘Tell you what,’ said the corpse, ‘I’ll come and spend the evening with you.’ ‘No, I’m dammed if you will,’ was the energetic response, as thoughts of Mary came into his mind. ‘Don’t want any bloomin ghosts comin round.’ ‘Well, will you put up a headstone and keep a grave in order, and plant a flower on it now and again, and cover me over here?’ ‘Yes, I’ll do that much.’ ‘It’s a wager, Shake hands.’ And so the bargain was made. ‘I’ve never been to the place where this here gold is,’ said the deceased, ‘but I can direct you.’ ‘Look here,’ said Tommy, ‘I don’t want no wild-goose chase. And I ain’t goin’ trampin about the country to please any d#%*d defunct!  –  If you’re goin’ to show me where it is you’ll have to tell me how you know.’ ‘Right,’ said the remains, ‘that’s fair. Well, I’ll tell you.

My mate and me had bin in this country a year. We separated to look for water, but I pegged out first. He found a big, rich reef eighteen miles from here.’ ‘But how do you know?’ naturally enquired Tommy. ‘Oh, ‘cos he told me. He came here after he also pegged out and told me. Now, I know the place is eighteen miles from there, the way I’m pointing’. But before you find it you got to find him. He made me promise I’d tell the first chap I saw, and you’re the first, so I’m tellin’ you.’ ‘But where is he?’ ‘I don’t know. He never told me. But it’s between here and the gold. An’ you’ve got to undo his swag an you’ll find his blanket torn where he took pieces to blaze his track after he found it. If you follow ‘the blaze you’ll find the reef, thats all I know.’ And, giving himself a shake, the remains fell to pieces — and Billy woke up in Fremantle!

Two years later of knocking about with varying luck, and not much of that, had driven a good deal of the romance out of Tommy’s system, and he had forgotten the dream and treasured only a hazy remembrance of pretty Mary Kelly, whom he scarcely hoped to see again. He had, by stages, battled along to Mount Margaret, and was prospecting in the vicinity of a reported rich find, in a streak of dry and hungry looking country, which, as far as appearance bore testimony, had not felt a rainfall since the Creation, and had never been trodden by the foot of man. But Tommy did not mind the desolation. He had food and water in his bags, and was not far from supplies. His attention was attracted by a greenish patch a little distance out of his course, and, riding up to it, he found a very small soak, by the side of which lay a body— it was the defunct of his dream — in the same position as he had seen it on his first night in Fremantle.

The whole situation flashed back to his memory, and Tommy stood, with his head bared, waiting for the corpse to open the conversation. But the remains preserved a cold, sarcastic silence. One stiffened arm pointed to the north, the other hand was buried in the sand. Near by lay a pick, but no swag, and Tommy, half dreading, yet hopeful that the dead man might speak, muttered:

‘Poor beggar ! There must have been two of ’em,’ ‘Where’s the other one?

he asked, his eyes resting on the outstretched arm of the figure at his feet. ‘By gee I’ll take his tip. Eighteen miles north from here?  Well, I can do that lot tomorrow, and anyhow, it’s worth trying. I might find the other chap. It’s funny, anyway. Queerest go I ever heard of. Like a yarn out of a book. Only this is true and they ain’t’. After burying the body, Tommy laid down his blankets and slept without any further visitations, and bright and early in the morning started on a journey of discovery which he irreverently described as

‘a blanky wild-goose chase.’

However, he kept on his course over as barren a piece of country as any man hates to travel, keeping a bearing north, by the sun. Noon had passed, and as he had made an early start, so calculated he had covered the distance, but had met with no sign of the second remains. ‘I’ll go on for another hour,’ he said to himself, ‘and if I don’t come up with him, I’ll give up’. The thought had scarcely been framed in his mind when his brumby shied and nearly threw him out of the saddle. A piece of blue blanket, weighted with a stone, had fluttered almost at his feet Tommy almost jumped out of the saddle, and, picking up the ‘blaze’, ran it back to where a body was lying, and it may not be to his discredit to say that he immediately caught his pony and ran the track the other way a mile, to the foot of a low ridge, and there he saw evident traces of hasty pottering work on a big outcrop. Five minutes with the butt of his pick on the cap of the reef satisfied him, and Tommy’s overwrought feelings found vent in a yell which might have been heard a mile away, had there been anyone to hear it.

So the ‘Christmas Find’ was discovered. How it was sold, and what he got for it, it is not the business of this veracious chronicler to set out. One thing may be mentioned. He went back to Sydney within the three years, to find Mary Kelly married to the large policeman, and when he started to upbraid her for lack of fidelity, her better half knocked him down with a club, and promptly ran him into the watch-house on a charge of riotous conduct and obscene language, for which, next morning, he was fined 40 shillings. That ended his romance, and he employed the remaining few months of his life, and the balance of his money, between the racecourse and the cemetery, in which latter, according to his contract, he erected a tombstone, without an inscription, to the memory of the defunct prospector.

On his way home from Rosehill, after a day’s racing, he collided with a tram going at a high rate of speed, and such of his remains as could be swept up were placed in a bag, and after being sat upon at the morgue, were buried in the pauper lot in Rookwood graveyard. Probably ‘Happy Christmas Hogan’ has met the other ghosts ere this, and set out the exact position of affairs, but no reliable information on the point is to hand …..