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Bushrangers were Australian outlaws. They held up coaches, stole gold and robbed banks. In the 1850s, as the gold rush hit New South Wales and Victoria, gangs of bushrangers lay in wait to rob the gold escorts.
On 15 June 1862, Frank Gardiner's gang of bushrangers held up the gold escort at the Coonbong Rock near Eugowra. They stole £14,000. It was then the largest robbery in Australian history. Frank Gardiner, the Scottish bushranger, became Australia’s most wanted man.
Details of Frank’s early life are lost. He was born around 1830 either in Ross-shire or at Boro Creek near Goulburn, New South Wales, after his parents left Scotland to live in Australia.
Frank’s real name is thought to have been Frank Christie but he signed himself ‘Francis Gardiner, the Highwayman'.
Frank Gardiner began his life of crime as a horse thief. He was arrested in 1850 but escaped from the Pentridge Stockade at Melbourne. When Frank was arrested in 1854, again for horse stealing, he was sent to Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour. He spent the next five years in jail.
When he finally got out of jail Frank started a butcher’s shop. Rumours spread that he was selling stolen meat and Frank fled for the bush. He became an outlaw and led a gang of bushrangers. After many small heists Frank decided to hold up the gold escort at Eugowra Rocks.
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Gardiner and his gang lay in wait at Coonbong Rock. ‘Coonbong’ was the local aboriginal word for ‘dead man’. Gardiner laid a trap for the gold escort, blocking the narrow track. When the police and the coach appeared, Frank Gardiner leapt up shouting ‘bail up!’ - which meant ‘hands up’. A gunfight broke out and the bushrangers managed to escape with £14,000 worth of gold and bank notes.
The gang split the money and went their separate ways. Frank Gardiner headed for Queensland, where he married Catherine ‘Kitty’ Brown and ran a pub. He was eventually tracked down and captured by the New South Wales police in 1864.
By then Frank Gardiner was world famous. The gold robbery at Eugowra Rocks had hit the headlines. Even The Times in London and the newspapers in America had written about Frank Gardiner and his gang. Frank was known as ‘Gunman Gardiner’, ‘The Highwayman’, ‘The Prince of Tobymen’ ‘The King of the Road’ and ‘The Father of Bushranging’.
Gardiner was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Most of the other members of his gang weren’t so lucky. Henry Manns was hanged in 1863. Alex Fordyce and Johnny Bow were captured and sentenced to hard labour for life. Johnny O’Meally was shot dead during a robbery, and Ben Hall and Johnny Gilbert were both killed in shoot-outs with the police.
After 10 years in prison Frank Gardiner was offered a way out. He became the only man ever to be exiled from Australia. He was sent to Hong Kong but jumped ship and ended up in America. Gardiner ran the Twilight Star Saloon in the notorious Barbary Coast area of San Francisco, California.
No-one knows for sure how Frank died. Some newspapers reported he died of pneumonia in 1904, two years before the San Francisco earthquake. Others say that Frank Gardiner, the Highwayman, died in a gun fight in a California saloon.
An online video resource from Screen Australia, the Australian Government's film and TV arm, on Tom Roberts’ Bailed Up, a painting that helped define Australia’s national identity.
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