Design and Art Australia Online

sketcher and diarist, left Ireland for Van Diemen’s land in October 1822, accompanied by her husband, John Gardiner, whom she had married a month earlier at Colp, County Meath, her parents and her three brothers. They reached Hobart Town on board the Andromeda in May 1823. The Gardiners’ only child, Anna Maria, was born in Hobart Town in July 1827. From March 1828 the Gardiners lived in the Macquarie River district where John prospered as a storekeeper and pastoralist. In 1836 they sailed for Sydney; Mary and Anna Maria were to stay there while John selected land. He chose a run at Port Phillip on what became Gardiner’s Creek (now Hawthorn, Melbourne) and overlanded cattle to it—the first person to drive stock to Victoria from Sydney. Then they all sailed to Port Phillip in the Regia in 1837. Mary’s journal of the voyage is held at the Royal Commonwealth Society, London.

John Gardiner erected a house at Gardiner’s Creek and a pencil sketch of the building drawn about 1852, long after she had moved into town, is attributed to Mary. John had erected a house on his Melbourne town site in Bourke Street in 1839-40 and she and Anna Maria lived there while he was in England on business for the Port Phillip bank in 1841-42. John returned to England permanently in 1853 but Mary remained in Melbourne with their daughter. She died in Melbourne in March 1863. Her drawing of the house may therefore have been a souvenir for her husband on his departure. Mary has also had attributed to her a charming watercolour portrait captioned 'Miss Mary Gardiner’ (presumably Anna Maria) shown working on a large and hideous floral embroidery, possibly a cushion.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011