Portrait of Frank Gardiner

Frank Gardiner (1829 – c.1903), bushranger, was born Francis Christie in Scotland and came to Australia in 1834 when his free- settler parents took up land near Goulburn. Gardiner was twenty when he notched up his first criminal conviction – for horse stealing – in Geelong in October 1850. Sentenced to five years in Pentridge Gaol, he escaped less than six months later and returned to New South Wales. Convicted again of horse theft in March 1854, Gardiner was given seven years’ hard labour on Cockatoo Island, but had earned a ticket-of-leave by late 1859. Released on condition that he stay in the Carcoar district, Gardiner broke parole and went to the Lambing Flat goldfields where he ran a butchery. He left in early 1861 to escape charges of cattle-duffing and teamed up with a former Cockatoo Island colleague, John Piesley, and took to highway robbery. Gardiner then went to the Weddin Mountains where he was joined by John Gilbert, Ben Hall and others, forming the gang that in June 1862 netted £14,000 ‘in Gold Dust and Money’ in the hold-up of a gold escort coach near Eugowra. The audacity of the robbery meant instant infamy for Gardiner, who fled to Queensland with his mistress. As ‘Mr and Mrs Christie’ they ran a shop north of Rockhampton until, in February 1864, the police caught up with Gardiner and extradited him to Sydney for trial. Gardiner was acquitted on a charge of attempted murder, but pleaded guilty to two counts of robbery under arms and was sentenced to thirty-two years’ hard labour. His third stint in gaol was also cut short: in 1874, after considerable public petitioning, Governor Hercules Robinson determined that Gardiner had been harshly sentenced and released him, subject to his exile. Gardiner left Australia in 1875, ending up in San Francisco where he ran a saloon. He died in Colorado around 1903.

Photographers William Freeman (1809–1895) and James Freeman (1814–1870) established a studio on George Street, Sydney, in late 1854. It soon became one of the city’s most successful and the Freeman Brothers became even more prosperous following the invention of the carte de visite in the late 1850s, producing over 30,000 carte de visite negatives before 1870. Cheap and portable, the carte de visite was the preferred format for snaps of family and friends and also for images of performers, dignitaries and other public figures, infamous and otherwise. This photograph is a copy of an earlier portrait depicting Gardiner with a sitter said to be his then-lieutenant, John Gilbert, who is partly visible on the right-hand side.