GARDINER THE BUSH RANGER.

Inangahua Times, Volume VII, Issue 1073, 12 April 1882, Page 2

GARDINER THE BUSH RANGER.

♦ A Rockhampton man, Mr Breadmore, of Tooloomba, has interviewed Frank Gardiner, the notorious ex-bush-ranger, in ' Frisco, and describes him " as a respectable-looking man, though rather grog-blossomed." Gardiner told his visitor that he was very hard up, and that through giving too much credit he had lost his saloon, and had being living out of doors for six months, sleeping on wharves, &c' or anywhere he could find shelter for the night He also said he would rather be back in N.S.W., living on damper and mutton, than in the height of luxury in California. He further stated that, when taken prisoner in the Abercrombie Mountain, about 1862, he bought himself off from one of his captors for the sum or £50 10s, and that he in addition paid the same person £300 to say little about him when on his trial. Thus vanishes the false glory of the bushranger. The wiry, black-haired, sallow man —once the patroiJ&aint of every flash native horse-thief — has from sticking-up escorts descended to sleeping in wharfboilers in a foreign land, GardawV father Once kept a "Johnny-all-sorts " shop in Kent-street, Sydney. Mm Brown, the woman with whom the bushranger lived at the time of his capture, shot herself some years-ago i»-2L2. From alt accounts. 'inrrKniT has for a long while had very hard times. Several Sydney men who have met him in ' Frisco concur in describing him as utterly broken down, crippled by rheumatism, and as sitting behind the bar of his little drinking den, which borne the sign of " The Twilight, while a female served drinks to, his customers,