Crazy Cornelius & the Magic Pills Ch. 08

The media coverage was intense in the aftermath of Cornelius's disappearance, but it faded away as no trace of him could be found and the case went cold. Just another of another weird and unexplained tale from the Land Down Under, whether in the Australian bush or an urban area. And Cornelius Hawkins was added to the list of names of people who had vanished without trace over the years and never found such as Dorothy Arnold, Judge Crater, Jimmy Hoffa, Lord Lucan, Donald Crowhurst and Harold Holt.

Some strange Aussie stories eventually had a resolution, for example in 1999 there was another strange case where three young people were believed to have taken the same dangerous drug that afflicted the Hawkins family a year earlier. The trio, a low level drug pusher named Justin, his stoner mate Mitch and Justin's dim-witted druggie cousin Imogen had according to a rambling and badly written six page letter left behind by Imogen been contacted by God to climb to the summit of Mount Kosciuszko and receive an additional 10 new commandments for mankind to live by. In the letter Imogen had stated that from henceforth she was to be known as Miriam, Justin as Moses and Mitch as Aaron.

Justin, Mitch and Imogen were seen on their pilgrimage to the Snowy Mountains and last sighted going up a hiking trail wearing inadequate clothes in bad weather with night closing in. Imogen was attired in sandals, a tank top and denim shorts, the boys in football shorts, tee-shirts and sneakers. None were seen alive again, but in 2016 skeletal remains were found in a dense forest on Mount Kosciuszko. Forensics and dental records showed that these were the remains of Justin, Mitch and Imogen, placing their fates back in the hands of the living and deaths likely by exposure, unlike their friend Cornelius of whom no trace was ever found.

Having taken place in the late 1990s before social media was a thing and when internet was dial-up and people relied on print media or television for their news, the Hawkins family case faded away to obscurity in over two subsequent decades and today is largely forgotten. It was in some books about unexplained mysteries written in the years soon after, but the books are long out of print and might only be found as worn paperbacks in secondhand bookshops or market stalls. Some rare archive footage of news clips can be found on some social media sites and it was part of an American documentary series about road trips gone wrong, but the documentary series has not been screened for many years.

So what of the Hawkins family themselves and other people involved in the case today?

Lisa Baxter, Gavin's older sister who raised the alarm about her missing younger brother married her boyfriend Pete in 2001. They have had a successful marriage and careers, live in a nice house in Sydney's northern suburbs and now middle aged are proud parents of two kids now teenagers, a daughter born in 2005 and a son in 2008. Lisa and Gavin's parents sold their house up the road from the Hawkins house when they retired, Mr. and Mrs. Baxter moving to a village near Gosford on the New South Wales Central Coast to enjoy their senior years.

Danielle remained living with the Hawkins family for the rest of 1998 after her husband vanished, but departed Sydney in January 1999, returning to her home city of Newcastle in the Hunter Region where she had secured a full time teaching position at a high school. She lost contact with the Hawkins family and moved on fairly quickly, by the end of 1999 getting into a relationship with a guy who already had a son and daughter from a previous marriage.

When Cornelius was declared legally dead in 2005, it was noticed that Danielle arrived at the court hearing with a toddler son and heavily pregnant, sporting a large baby bump that revealed itself a few months later to be a daughter. Danielle and her new partner married just two weeks after this, and had a second daughter together in 2009. They are still together and living in Newcastle, Danielle still working as a high school teacher. The last contact with the Hawkins family and Danielle was a chance meeting between Danielle and Erica in Sydney in 2014. Danielle mooted they become friends on social media and keep in contact with Erica agreeing, but it was a perfunctory gesture on the part of both women and neither ever did.

Erica and Gavin qualified as nurses and are happily married, like Lisa and Pete living in a house purchased in Sydney's northern suburbs, now of course middle aged. Gavin is a nurse manager at a psychiatric hospital, while Erica is a senior nurse at a women and children's hospital, her skills as a midwife much praised by doctors and her superiors. They are also proud parents to a daughter Lucy and son Alex born respectively in 2009 and 2011, and they all live happily together with a dog, a cat, a rabbit and a guinea pig.

Not all of the Hawkins family are still living. Due to her advanced age and dementia Granny Hawkins died in 1999, while Alistair's brother David died in 2010. However unlike his brother the cause of David's demise was more normal -- cancer. Lisa and Gavin's grandparents have all passed away due to old age, as have Faye's parents.

Faye Hawkins like her siblings is still alive, is retired and still can be found at the same house at Number 9 from where the Hawkins family fled all those years ago. She has never remarried and the shrine to her long dead husband can still be found in the lounge room. Alistair's urn has now been joined by a second urn with Alistair inscribed upon it, this of course the blue heeler dog which passed due to the obvious reasons of shorter animal lives. Faye Hawkins has since gotten another dog, this time a red heeler bitch named Alison.

Brendan Hawkins remains concealed in his little granny flat to this day, and has not been into the main part of the house for over 20 years. Once a week Faye gets a list from her son detailing his requirements for the week and a bag of garbage to dispose of, otherwise there is no contact between mother and son.

Erica and Gavin's kids Lucy and Alex prefer spending time with their paternal grandparents on the Central Coast and with their older cousins Lisa and Pete's kids and the offspring of Pete's siblings than with the relatives on the maternal side of the family for several reasons.

For one, their mother has no nieces and nephews on this side due to one brother hiding inside for more than 25 years and another brother missing for over two decades. And it was noticed by her daughter and son-in-law that although Faye was kind and loving with her grandchildren, some of her actions were misguided and led to some anxiety in the children whenever they paid a visit.

Faye told the kids about their late grandfather still being around in spirit and watching over the family, that their Uncle Brendan was always hiding so that nobody ever saw him and that they had once had another Uncle named Cornelius, but he had become invisible one day before they were born. Of course the two young children thought that in their grandmother's house there was their grandfather's ghost and an invisible uncle watching them and another uncle they had never met hiding around dark corners and watching them too. Both were thoroughly frightened at the prospect of a visit to Grandma Faye's house, suffering nightmares on several occasions.

Now much older Lucy and Alex can understand more about their mother's complex family background, but still feel decidedly ill at ease at Grandma Faye's house, Number 9 having a depressing and eerie atmosphere possibly due to the unhappy history there and Brendan Hawkins still languishing behind a closed door for years on end.

Erica -- now obviously Erica Baxter -- does worry about her mother as she gets older, and sometimes in bed at night reflects on the Hawkins family turmoil back in 1998. While Erica can accept that her father is long deceased, that her mother will not change and that Brendan will always remain hidden from the world, she often wonders about her brother Cornelius, as his disappearance was never explained.

Sometimes, just before drifting off to sleep Erica thinks that despite him having now been missing longer than he was alive that her brother Cornelius -- now middle aged like herself - might turn up on their mother's doorstep one day either with more than 20 years of amnesia or simply no explanation for his absence for so long. Erica knows that the chances of this are remote -- about one hundredth of one percent -- but given what Cornelius was like in life she wouldn't put it past him.

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