The Gate of Golden Hope

Micky O’Driscoll, or “Micky the ‘Micky the Priest,” as he was known, humped his bluey disconsolately through the scrubby jam-tree thicket. Behind him some ten miles lay the town . . . . Hell’s blessings on it! . . . where he had squandered two months’ wages in as many days, and after a spree of glorious but short duration had received the not uncertain hint of the police officer to make himself scarce. Towns mused Micky, were the habitations of the Philistines, and an honest man had no part therein. The beasts of the field had their lairs, the fowls of the air their nests, but verily this son of woman knew not a resting place for his lightly-laden “Matilda” or for his Prince Alberts-shod feet.

Yet, perhaps, there was something to be said for the sober propriety of these foregathering places of mankind. Had he been able to adopt sobriety and respectability, he would not have been the peripatetic pauper that he had made himself. There would perhaps have been a cottage, rose festooned and snugly nestled in a garden, with a golden-haired woman and a chubby kid or two. Now these Eden-dwellers turned him out without grace or warning, so what was the use of a casual farm-hand, who had tramped the unknown miles of the back-country in the early gold-rush days, and who had lost himself in his pursuit of the elusive metal . . what was the use of such as he making a song about their lack of charity and understanding?

At the present moment, the milk of human kindness was the one thing missing from the menu. His dry tongue was cracked with the thirst of an empty aftermath. To drink in a cool and sociable bar was immeasurable joy, but when the pocket was barren of money and the bar’s attitude changed to unmasked hostility, the whole thing became an unbearable nightmare. Oh, for a haven of comfort and a spring of the amber liquid … !

His humble soliloquy was checked as the track came upon a gate. It was a gate to be proudly exhibited in a city museum as an example of rural ingenuity. In all his wide experience, Micky O’Driscoll had never seen such a gate. It was a mixture of scrap iron, erected in a more or less vertical plane. There were pieces of rusty half-inch piping, barbed wire and fencing wire, string, rope and binder-twine, whipcords and broken reins, and it hung a silent memorial to the uses of adversity . . . which are great. A sheet of galvanised iron, that had apparently been churned in a ‘Cock-Eyed Bob’, graced the middle portion.

On it was scrawled in spidery characters, “Golden Hope.

“Peering over the top of this formidable obstruction, he saw a low house of rough-hewn logs, ranked side by side with gaping crevices between. A window yawned open and see-sawed in the vagrant wind. Micky’s eyes returned to the gate that barred his progress. “Golden Hope,” he read, “well, wot’s lackin’ in gold is suttin’ly made up by ‘ope. I’m game to bet the bloke wot owns this concern numbers ‘ope among ‘is most valued possessions. Without judgin too strongly, I should say it’s likely a fair amount of ‘ope is wanted to undo this ‘ere durned contraption.”

He turned a savage glare upon the offending scrap heap. At that moment a dog, a product of its Irish father’s rakish youth, appeared from behind the tatterdemalion house and set up a menacing barking. Its brown eyes flashed with electric hate, and the fine hairs on its neck were lifted to form a bristling collar. “Dang it!” “The Priest” muttered under his breath, “Away with you, you barkin’ son of a Shin Fane zealot! It’s not a bit of use for you to stand there barin’ you ivories while this hardware shop’s between us.”

Again he read “Golden Hope.” Strange how that name beguiled him. It stirred emotions long since dormant, and the mysteries that rose in his memory included the golden-haired woman of his dreams, with her eyes of cornflower blue and teeth of dental perfection. The yelping dog receded into the nebulous distance. The woman was speaking. “Micky,” she said, and her voice was soft like the whispers of a night wind, “Micky, you have come back at last!”

Yet though her words spoke unreserved welcome, her eyes roamed enquiringly over his sun-tanned face. He read their mission aright, for he replied “Yes, Molly, at last with a clear conscience I can say I have left all the old life behind me. I have foresworn my old companions, I have deserted the old craving, so I can come to you cleanly and claim you for my own.”

The gate between them had similarly shed its dross and now shone with highly burnished gold. “You are sure, Micky?”Molly, my own, when I left you it was to fight the great fight with myself. I have battled and I have won. Not a single drop have I tasted for three whole years!”

A roseate smile lighted the woman’s face. “This is the day I have dreamed of, Micky,” she said simply. “And I,” agreed the enraptured man. Then, “Molly!” “Yes, dear?” The face was growing nearer. “Let me kiss you as I used in the good old days.” He moved forward. He felt her breath hot upon his brows. His eyes were moist.

Suddenly! his progress was arrested by a substance that flung him back to the plane of things mortal. The face and eyes receded, then vanished, and he collapsed heavily on a tangle of embryo shrapnel. In his ears dinned the sound of a barking dog, drawing rapidly nearer. Then a stentorian voice thundered,

“Wot d’yer mean by breakin’ down my gate?”

O’Driscoll lifted himself painfully from the nameplate of the “Golden Hope” to face a swiftly approaching man, whose beetling brows and hairy chest boded ill for his well-being. In a glance, he took in the newcomer’s patchwork nether garments, and the tattered shirt that gaped like an imbecile child. “Wot in ‘ell ….!” commenced the man, but Micky was on his feet and smiling.

“Pennyweight!” he ejaculated.b “Even so,” admitted the other, “that ain’t no reason for you to break down my gate.”

“I might a’ thought when I seen it,” said O’Driscoll. “They was good ole times we ‘ad when we was on the ‘Golden ‘Ope'” “Why, it’s ‘Micky the Priest’ !” “The same,” said Micky. “An’ wot are yer doin’ in this darned part?” “Footin’ it,  lookin’ for work, a bed, tucker . . . any ole thing.”

“Come inside, man. It does me liver good t’ see yer!” Over a bottle, they grew mutually reminiscent. “Ah, they was gran’ days at the ole mine. Wot ‘appened to the ‘Golden ‘Ope’ in the end?”

“Sold ‘er as a goin’ concern, when I’d drained the last ounce out of ‘er,” chuckled Pennyweight. “An’ …. an’ married?”

“Yes, married. To that girl from the ‘Orshoe. Remember Molly O’Bawn? The one with the golden ‘air, an’ eyes like the colour of cornflowers, an’ teeth like the sea sands. She’ll be along directly.

Why, wot’s the matter?” O’Driscoll had risen to his feet and was fastening on his swag. “Never was much of a bloke fer wimmen,” he said. “Reckon I’ll ‘op it?’ “Yer won’t stay?”  “Not much!”

“Micky the Priest” gripped his billy-can and stumbled blindly over the shattered gateway of “Golden Hope.”

For this and further Ripping Yarns and Tragic Tales: Available from ‘Hesperian Press”

The Western Australian goldrushes of the 1890’s witnessed the first major encounter between Australians West and East. Henry Lawson led the charge of writers who came West. This book showcases those writers and some of their works in what was a little-known period of great literary activity that would prove significant for both Western Australia and Australia.

Generously illustrated and featuring stories and verse by Henry Lawson, Joseph Furphy, Albert Facey, Andree Hayward (Viator), George Hope (Bungarra), EG Murphy (Dryblower), JP Bourke (Bluebush), TH Wilson (Crosscut), FW Ophel (Prospect Good), Ben Strange, LB Jupp and JK Ewers. In addition to works by these writers, a number of short stories have been included by anonymous Western Australian-based writers – there are 21 short stories/sketches in all and over 35 poems included in this collection. Mainly chosen for their spark of humour and irony, their appeal remains timeless. Many stories appear for the first time in book form, having been rescued from newspapers and periodicals of the times.

The book provides a rare insight into our Western Australian literary development and celebrates our pioneering writers in the 40 years from Goldrushes to Great Depression.