Fire in the Blood: The Epic Tale of Frank Gardiner and Australia's Other Bushrangers

FIRE IN THE

BLOOD

ROBERT MACKLIN is one of Australia’s most exciting and wide-ranging authors with novels (The Queenslander, Juryman, The Paper Castle) and non-fiction works (100 Great Australians, The Secret Life of Jesus and the memoir, War Babies) to his credit. With co-author Peter Thompson he wrote The Battle of Brisbane, Kill the Tiger, Keep Off the Skyline and The Man Who Died Twice, the life and adventures of Morrison of Peking, currently being adapted for the big screen. He lives in Canberra, where he divides his time between books and screenwriting.

ROBERT MACKLIN

The epic tale of Frank Gardiner

and Australia’s other ushrangers

First published in 2005

Copyright © Robert Macklin 2005

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

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National Library of Australia

Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Macklin, Robert, 1941- .

Fire in the blood : the epic tale of Frank Gardiner and

Australia’s other bushrangers.

ISBN 1 74114 291 1.

1. Gardiner, Frank, 1830-1903. 2. Bushrangers - Australia -

Biography. I. Title.

364.155092

Maps and illustration by Ian Faulkner

Set in 12/18 pt Requiem by Midland Typesetters, Maryborough

Printed by Griffin Press, South Australia

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Peter Thompson,

a mate indeed

Contents

Cast of characters

Maps

Author’s note

Acknowledgements

PART I Ghosts from the Past

Chapter 1 In for the kill

Chapter 2 The boy from Boro

Chapter 3 Westwood Ho

Chapter 4 A mother’s hate

Chapter 5 South by southwest

Chapter 6 A mate indeed

Chapter 7 Black and white

Chapter 8 Dark days

Chapter 9 Rough justice

Chapter 10 Rough company

PART II Blood on the Wattle

Chapter 11 The battle plan

Chapter 12 The rush for gold

Chapter 13 Shot in the heart

Chapter 14 Rules of the game

Chapter 15 Prince of the road

Chapter 16 The big strike

Chapter 17 Potty by name

Chapter 18 North and south

Chapter 19 Cops and robbers

Chapter 20 Trapped

Chapter 21 Trials and tribulations

Chapter 22 Two verdicts

Chapter 23 In durance vile

Chapter 24 Farewell to my lovely

Chapter 25 All fall down

Chapter 26 Dancing the two-step

Chapter 27 The last goodbye

Chapter 28 Freedom?

PART III Galloping for Glory

Chapter 29 Kelly come lately

Chapter 30 Go east, young man

Chapter 31 Darkie

Chapter 32 A well-laid plan

Chapter 33 The faro kid

Chapter 34 Sweet Felina

Chapter 35 Gallop for glory

Chapter 36 The end and the beginning

Epilogue

Cast of characters

Frank Gardiner (real name Francis Christie) born 1829, Rosshire, Scotland, arrived in Australia with his family in 1834; instigated the Golden Era of Bushranging; died in America c. 1904.

THE FAMILY

Charles Christie born 1798, Elgin, Scotland, Frank’s father; overseer for Henry Monro in Boro district near Goulburn and Campaspe district, Victoria; died 1840–41, probably by drowning.

Jane Christie (nee Whittle) born 1798, Scotland, wife of Charles Christie and Henry Monro; mother of Frank, Charles Jr, Robina, Archina, Charlotte and Maria; died in 1842 in Collingwood Hospital, Melbourne.

Charles Christie, Jr born 1824, Scotland, Frank’s elder brother; died c. 1840 at Campaspe, Victoria.

Robina Christie born 1827, Scotland, Frank’s elder sister; death unknown.

Archina Griffiths (nee Christie) born 1830, Scotland, one of Frank’s younger sisters; married Henry Griffiths of York Street, Sydney; death unknown.

Charlotte Deacon Cale (nee Christie) born 1833, Scotland, one of Frank’s younger sisters; married a Mr Deacon of Tasmania, and later Joseph Cale, of King Street, Sydney; death unknown.

Henry Monro born 1810, Scotland, Frank’s step-father, arrived in Australia (1833), farmed in Boro, NSW, and Campaspe, Victoria; married Jane Christie (1841), Catherine Power (1846); left Australia (1860); died in Malaga, Spain, in 1869.

Catherine (‘Kitty’) Brown (nee Walsh) born 1843, NSW, Frank’s common law wife; died in New Zealand by her own hand in 1867.

THE BUSHRANGERS AND ASSOCIATES

Tommy and John Clarke born 1840 and 1842 respectively, took up bushranging in 1862; hanged in Darlinghurst Gaol, Sydney, in 1867.

Mary Fogg (nee Taylor) born c. 1830, NSW, lifelong friend of Frank Gardiner; death unknown.

William Fogg born 1823, Manchester, England, transported for stealing hats in 1832; married Mary Taylor in 1842; partner of Frank Gardiner in butchery in 1861; death unknown.

Johnny Gilbert born 1842, Canada, arrived in Australia in 1852, took up bushranging in 1860; killed by gunfire near Binalong, NSW, in May 1865.

Ben Hall born 1837, NSW, took up bushranging in 1859; killed by gunfire near Forbes, NSW, in May 1865.

Harry Hall born 1859, NSW, son of Ben Hall; married Kate Fullbrook in Dubbo in 1899; died in Tamworth in 1917 of cancer. There is no record of him ever leaving Australia.

Ned Kelly born 1855, Victoria, took up bushranging in 1878; hanged in Pentridge Gaol, Victoria, in 1880.

Detective Daniel McGlone date of birth unknown, captured Frank Gardiner at Apis Creek in 1864; visited Gardiner in San Francisco in the 1870s; death unknown.

Dan Morgan born 1838, Sydney, took up bushranging in 1858; killed by gunfire in NSW in 1865.

Sir Frederick Pottinger born 1831, India, arrived in Australia c. 1856; appointed to high-ranking police position in 1861; died from accidental self-inflicted gunshot in Sydney in 1865.

John Peisley born 1834, NSW, took up bushranging in 1860; hanged in Bathurst, NSW, in 1861.

Fred Ward and Mary Ann Bugg (‘Thunderbolt’ and ‘Yellow-long’) born 1836, Windsor, NSW, and 1834, Gloucester, NSW, respectively, took up bushranging in 1864; Mary Ann died of consumption in 1867 and Ward was killed by gunfire in 1870.

William Westwood (‘Jackey Jackey’) born 1821, Essex, England, transported to NSW in 1837; took up bushranging in 1840; hanged on Norfolk Island in 1846.

THE AMERICANS

Wyatt Earp born 1848, Illinois, lawman and gambler; married Josie in 1880; reached Denver, Colorado, in 1881 after the Gunfight at the OK Corrall; died in 1929.

John Henry (‘Doc’) Holliday born 1851, Georgia, became a dentist in 1872; took up gambling in 1875; took up with ‘Big Nose’ Kate in 1876; arrived in Denver, Colorado, with Wyatt Earp in 1881; died of tuberculosis in 1887.

Author’s note

For reasons I have never quite understood, for much of my adult life I have been engaged, even obsessed, by the life and times of Frank Gardiner the bushranger. There is something about his character and the forces that shaped it that touches the deepest part of me.

He was a dashing, rebellious figure in the nineteenth-century history of my country. He, more than any other, was responsible for the extraordinary phenomenon of the golden era of bushranging that erupted in the 1860s and culminated in the iconic drama of the Kelly boys and their final shootout at Glenrowan twenty years later.

He set the tone of the gallant bushranger who never mistreated a lady and never did, in his words, ‘a mean or petty act’. By his actions and the support given to him by his hundreds of admirers and confederates, he threw into stark relief the sharp division in Australian society at the time—on the one hand the well-connected English squatters who grabbed the good land and backed their claims with all the forces of authority, and, on the other, the emancipated convicts, the small settlers and the Irish refugees who struggled to live on what was left over from the rich man’s table.

He sent the forces of law into paroxysms of rage and retribution. He engendered fanatical loyalty among his closest followers, particularly that will-o’-the-wisp of the road, Johnny Gilbert, who was his first lieutenant. He took immense pleasure in tweaking the noses of the Traps, particularly his chief antagonist, Sub-Inspector of Police, Sir Frederick Pottinger, who combined all the qualities Frank Gardiner despised—privileged birth, superior airs, a wastrel’s habits and a casual attitude to women.

Frank loved one woman: Catherine ‘Kitty’ Brown. It is one of the most powerful love stories of the Australian chronicle. And to understand its genesis, one has to get to know the man behind the derring-do.

Part of the Gardiner attraction has been the mystery surrounding his early years. For a long time it was believed that he was the son of a Scottish settler, Charles Christie, and an Aboriginal woman named Mary Clarke; that he was born in Goulburn in about 1829 and, when still a youngster, ran away from home and lived with an old lag named Gardiner.

Then in the 1980s the manifest of the ship James revealed that Frank had arrived from Scotland in 1834 with the rest of the Christie family—father, Charles; mother, Jane (nee Whittle); Charles junior, ten; Robina, seven; Frank, five;Archina, four; and Charlotte, twelve months. Despite this unequivocal evidence, the legend persisted that ‘Darkie’ Gardiner had some Aboriginal ancestry and ‘facts’ have been contorted in an attempt to sustain it. The truth is much more interesting and, to my great delight, I have been able to uncover much of it in long sessions of research at the Mitchell Library in Sydney and through the private collections of the late Stephan Williams, an amateur historian who shared my fascination with bushranging.

The most striking of these discoveries concern Frank’s early life and his formative teenage years, particularly his relationship with his step-father, Henry Monro, a bona fide member of the landowning class.

Monro’s departure from Scotland was not exactly voluntary. He was the son of Alexander Monro, a professor at Edinburgh University just as his father and his grandfather had been before him. Indeed, they all held the chair of medicine and each had the Christian name of Alexander. They were known as Monro Primus, Secundus and Tertius.

Henry was born at Craiglockhart House, the family seat, on 24 August 1810, the third child of Alexander Tertius, and was educated at Edinburgh Academy. But Henry’s inclinations were not academic and his temper was of the hair-trigger variety, particularly after he’d taken a drink or two. He attacked his own father in Craiglockhart House and, in a quarrel about his dissolute habits, Henry seized his parent and hurled him down the stairs. Professor Monro was not seriously injured but the breach was final and soon afterward, at the age of 23, Henry sailed for New South Wales a few months before Charles Christie and his family.

Most of my information about Monro’s activities in Australia comes from the journals of the Chief Aboriginal Protector in Victoria, George Augustus Robinson, and their significance to Frank Gardiner’s life has never previously been discovered. Robinson and his assistant, Edward G. Parker, visited Monro’s stations several times and recorded his savage treatment of Aboriginal people. Indeed, they damned Monro and his neighbour Charles Hutton as ‘sadistic monsters’ but were helpless to prevent their ‘punitive missions’ to murder or drive away the local clans.

Monro would leave Australia in 1860, never to return. He took Frank’s young half-sister Maria with him, together with a subsequent family of six children. He died in Malaga, Spain, in 1869. However, that was not the end of his connection to the Antipodes. His brother David migrated to New Zealand in 1842, became a pastoralist and politician, and was knighted in 1866.

Henry Monro’s youngest son, Charles, joined the British Army and, having taken over command of the operation from General Sir Ian Hamilton, was responsible for the evacuation of Gallipoli. He too was knighted.

At the other end of his life, somewhat less is known about the time Frank spent in San Francisco after he became the only Australian ever to be exiled from his homeland in 1873.At this time, only his ownership of The Twilight Saloon and his marriage to a certain widow lady in Colorado is well attested.

Along the way, I have come to know the man better than I know my brother, and it is this that has given me the confidence to tell much of the story in Frank’s own voice. This, and the fact that there are still gaps in the official record, which can only be filled by the author’s imagination. I have done so for both literary and practical reasons. Good storytelling requires the tale to be bound together in an elegant, satisfying package. Moreover, Frank Gardiner’s life demands an ending worthy of all that went before; and since the historical resources were deficient I was more than happy to supply them from the creative mind in a way that just might have happened and that did the character justice.

In dealing with Frank’s life and career as a bushranger in Australia I have taken great care not to go beyond the known facts. This applies equally to the other bushrangers and to all the literary references Frank makes, such as the autobiography of William Westwood and the horrific reports of conditions on Norfolk Island. However, I freely confess that the scenes in San Francisco and Colorado involve imaginary characters. Wyatt Earp and ‘Doc’ Holliday were real enough––and they were in Denver, Colorado, at the relevant time––but there is no record of their jousting with the famous Australian bushranger. And there is no known occasion when Henry (better known as Harry) Hall, the son of the bushranger Ben Hall, travelled to America.

The golden age of bushranging in mid-nineteenth century Australia was one of the unique elements of the national experience. Yet it has fallen into neglect in our appreciation of our remarkable past. Professional historians have apparently felt it beneath them, since very little academic work of note has emerged, and the popular imagination has concentrated on Ned Kelly and his gang, who by any serious measure were an afterthought in the annals of bushranging. Ned might well have been inspired by the daring deeds of Ben Hall, Dan Morgan and Frank Gardiner a generation earlier. Indeed, during his takeover of Jerilderie, he and his gang are recorded as riding up and down the main street calling for the return to the good old days of Morgan and Hall.

But it was Frank Gardiner who started it all. And it is Frank Gardiner who deserves both the accolades and the critical lash from each side of the political spectrum—those who see him as a rebel against the injustice of class that divided our young country, and those who condemn him as a latter-day terrorist. Either way, it is a story that demands to be told.

Acknowledgements

One evening in 2004, Stephan Williams lay down on his bed in his Canberra home and died. He was still in his fifties, thin, intense, well groomed and softly spoken. I had missed a couple of our regular Monday-night meetings where we talked in his sitting room about Australia’s bushrangers—by his calculation, more than 1000 of them.

In his vision, they permeated the fabric of Australian society in the nineteenth century yet were virtually ignored by academic historians. They were our country’s hidden history and he could never understand why. It seemed that there was a conspiracy of silence and he raged against it. He worked in a humble public-service job during the day simply to finance his grand obsession at night. He never stopped until he died that evening, of exhaustion. He bequeathed to me a tremendous knowledge of the time and the social conditions that produced our bushranging past. His house was a library, every shelf and surface packed with books, papers, and monographs, many that he had produced himself. J.O. Randell’s two-volume work Pastoral Settlement in Northern Victoria was immensely valuable.

I am also indebted to another researcher whom I have not met—Edgar Penzig. It has been Penzig’s mission to portray the bushrangers—and particularly those I deal with in this book—as no more than criminals actuated by some flaw of character. But, to make his case, Penzig has done more than most enthusiasts for the subject to uncover the documents and photographs that give weight and strength to the real story, as opposed to the bush yarns that so often prove to be unfounded.

I offer my sincere thanks to Margaret Kennedy, my agent and Angela Handley, my editor, who helped me to shape a particular approach, which, in effect, combines serious historical research with two ‘bookends’ of fiction to give structure and, I hope, a measure of entertainment to the work.

Finally, I thank my wife, Wendy, for her warm encouragement and wise counsel.

Robert Macklin

2005

Part I

GHOSTS

from the

PAST

CHAPTER 1

In for the kill

The moment he stepped off the neat little steamer Warrego and onto San Francisco’s Barbary Wharf, I knew it was Harry, the son of my old comrade-at-arms, Ben Hall. And I knew he had come to kill me.

My sisters in Sydney had sent me warning, but I’d have known anyway. Once you’ve been hunted as I have, you never lose the instinct and Harry had all the earmarks of a young hunter after dangerous game: the set jaw, the tight carriage, the knuckles white on the hand that carried his carpetbag.

As he approached in the afternoon light, I could see he had Ben’s good looks but his features were finer and softer than those of his father. Delicate almost. If he hadn’t been on a mission to kill Frank Gardiner, I’d have called him handsome. Hell, he was handsome anyway.

I watched him, waiting for the moment. The usual mix was scattered across the wharf: bustling business types, sharp-eyed customs men, the occasional strumpet and pickpocket ducking among the arrivals and the welcomers. Harry stopped, pulled a folded paper out of his back pocket and studied it—a mud map apparently, directions to some venue in the big city, The Twilight Saloon perhaps. The moment was right. I bowled up.

‘Howdy young fella, ’ I said.‘You look like a man just in from a long sea voyage in need of a drink and some directions. Welcome to America.’

He looked up, gave me a quick grin, then set that handsome jaw again. He searched my face and I saw him calculating. But he hadn’t laid those blue eyes on me since he was a babe in arms, and I’d changed a lot since they’d plastered that picture of me on every public building in the country, the one where I’m sitting with Johnny Gilbert, dressed to the nines and with the full waxed moustache. A bit of a dandy.

I still look after myself, still take care of appearances, but that young dandy is long gone. ‘Curtis Allenby, ’ I told him, introducing myself with a handle I had ready and with a Yankee accent so thick it would bog a duck.

‘G’day, ’ he said.‘My name’s Taylor.’

He looked at me for a reaction. I gave him nothing but a wide smile and a pat across the shoulders.

‘And what brings you to San Francisco, Mr Taylor?’

‘Cattle, ’ he said.

‘Import? Export? Breeding stock?’

‘Bit of everything . . .’

‘Well, it’s a pleasure to have you here, all the way from Australia, I take it.’

‘Just so.’

‘That’s a place I have always wanted to visit. Nearly made it once in the big goldrush of the fifties. But family responsibilities kept me chained to hearth and home.’

‘It’s a big country.’

‘It is indeed, ’ I said. ‘I have cargo aboard. It’ll be a while before they unload it; how about that drink?’

He hesitated then nodded. We strolled across the rough planks to The Hornpipe, Harry picking his way like a young prancer.‘Takes a while to get your land legs, ’ I said.

‘Yeah.’

I set him at a table before I went to the bar, as I was pretty well known in The Hornpipe. But I needn’t have worried; the barman was new and he was good at his job—filled the beer mugs and my shot glass with the smooth speed of a professional.

Back at the table Harry took a draught, replaced the pot on the table and wiped away the suds with the back of his hand. ‘Good drop, ’ he said.

‘California’s finest.’

I jumped in with both feet.‘No doubt you’ll make the acquaintance of a famous countryman of yours—Mr Frank Gardiner, the proprietor of The Twilight Saloon.’

He looked up sharpish but gave nothing.‘You know him?’

I was tempted to spin a yarn about what a wonderful fellow he was—respected citizen, community leader, friend to the poor and homeless—but I knew it wouldn’t wash. He was Ben Hall’s boy, after all, and I could see that when those blue eyes started to flash he could become a handful. So I offered some vague words about Gardiner’s colourful past.

‘I’ve heard of him, ’ he said. ‘Someone said the saloon was in Kearny Street.’

‘I believe so—corner of Kearny and Broadway. Not more than a half a mile.’

He nodded.‘I probably won’t have time, ’ he said.

‘Where are you headed then? You looked like you were getting your bearings . . .’

‘No, I’ll be fine. I’d better get going.’ He smacked the glass pot down and extended a hand.‘Good to meet you, Mr Allenby.’

‘Likewise, ’ I said, giving his paw a solid squeeze.‘You take care.’

He left without turning back. I finished my drink then ambled out to the dockside and breathed in the salt air. Fact is, I did have some cargo on the ship—letters from my sisters Archina and Charlotte, no doubt with the usual newspaper cuttings and memoirs from the men I’d dealt with and others who claimed some knowledge of me to squeeze their way into history. The girls usually sent them with the purser to be hand delivered. But the Warrego was a newcomer to the Pacific trade and I’d have to check it out below decks.

Harry Taylor. Understandable, I guess—it was James Taylor who took the place of father in the kid’s life when Bridget walked out on Ben. And, after I’d been incarcerated, it was James’s young brother Richard who took my lovely Kitty to the New Zealand goldfields and the tragedy that followed. So, now he’s Taylor and he’s come to take his revenge. Well, we’ll see about that.

I collected my letters and the small, chunky volume they’d sent to me: The Life of William Westwood (Alias Jackey Jackey), The Outlaw of New South Wales. It had been published last year and I’d read of it in the Sydney Herald. The girls had had it rebound in leather, beautifully smooth to the touch.

I flicked to the first page: ‘Edited by the Rev. Thomas Rogers, formerly Chaplain of Norfolk Island. Published 1879.’ I knew of Rogers. He’d provided the pen and paper to young Westwood, the poor devil, in the few weeks he had left after he’d been sentenced to hang, back in 1846. He’d probably helped him with his spelling and grammar as he laboured in the shadow of the gallows. I knew Jackey Jackey’s story to the last detail. He was all the talk of my childhood. As a young whelp I had been to the places where he roved. And later I had heard the chronicle of his life and death told and retold a hundred times by the lags on Cockatoo Island and in Darlinghurst. But I wanted to read it from his own hand, for at such a time a man’s words are touched by grace.

I walked up Washington Street from the pier, passed Battery and over Sansome to Columbus Circle at the edge of China Town. I was well known among the Celestials and I heard my name shouted half-a-dozen times—‘Hey, Mr Flank’—on my way to The Scarlet Letter. I waved back to them—I have always found them square dealers and cheerful with it; they had a bad deal in Lambing Flat during the gold rush, a rotten deal, and I wasn’t too proud to say so. Such word gets about and it did me no harm at all in the dens when I needed a little something to while away the hours when the memories got too hard. I call it the Exile’s Companion. The authorities have a harsher name for it.

When I reached The Scarlet Letter in Clay Street, I sent a boy to Fanny at the Saloon with a message. She knew I was meeting the ship and she wouldn’t rest easy until she heard from me. I had decided to give the Saloon a wide berth for a couple of days; let Harry stew for a while. When he turned up—as he surely would— she should tell him I was away on business but expected back soon. And she should be generous with the measures. He’d never been in a place as big and bold as ’Frisco. By the time I turned up, I wanted him wondering just what the devil he’d got himself into.

Big Tess at the Letter had a warm welcome for me and not without reason; I had spent more than my share on the pleasures of the flesh over the years and I tipped the girls well. And there were other avenues of understanding between us. From time to time we’d been in a position to help each other out on matters that might otherwise have involved the unnecessary intervention of the law. We both knew that in our line of business it pays to have friends. So, after a cup of coffee from her best chinaware in the fancy parlour, I betook myself to an upper room, intending to read my mail and flick through the fearful yarn of young Westwood before whiling away the hours with one of the young beauties from Tess’s stable.

But, when I opened the envelopes of Archina and Charlotte, I barely got past the salutations before the script blurred with my own damned tears. Doesn’t happen every time. I used to be able to take their news from home in my stride, file it away in that part of the mind where lives the past in all its joys and regrets, and get on with the business of the day. But whether it’s the advancing years or, more likely, the arrival of young Harry Hall, I just couldn’t peg it. A great Pacific roller seemed to sweep over me and send me tumbling. Felt as though I was drowning in my own foolish emotions. Nothing for it but to make the call for a buxom young filly to distract me.

Tess had one of Bell’s electrical speech machines in the room connected to her parlour. I spoke into it. ‘I’ll send Josie up right away, ’ she shouted through the thing.

‘And a bottle of Bushmills, ’ I shouted back.

I would like to say that Josie’s munificent charms worked their magic and cast out the demons, but it would be stretching the truth. Fact is, I performed badly and, though she tried all the tricks of her roguish trade, I was not able to join in with my usual enthusiasm. I remained distracted. I never thought I’d say these words but I was glad to see the back of her.

I poured myself a whiskey and took out the book. I opened it and read the first