The Gardiners of Gardiner's Creek
- scraze
- Oct 17
- 9 min read
Well over a year ago, I published a blog post on the Mystery of Mary Gardiner’s Diaries and wondering if anyone knew where they had ended up. No-one has ever come forward.
Mary Gardiner was the wife of the first British settler and landowner in Boroondara, John Gardiner. The original blog post stemmed from my discovery of a hand-written biography of Mary and John Gardiner in the National Library of Australia called the Gardiners of Gardiners Creek. Dated 1959, it was written by Leslie Wilmoth, who was also the author of the only other biography of John Gardiner, John Gardiner: Pioneer and Overlander, published in 1837.
At 128 written pages long, aside from a few grainy photographs, the entire manuscript of Gardiners of Gardiners Creek looks like this:
I started transcribing the biography last year and let me tell you it is a long and tedious exercise. So much so that, I couldn’t take it anymore and gave myself an extended break.
But with the Gardiner name so prevalent in Glen Iris, some weeks ago I decided to dust it off and give a final push to finish it. And today, I finally did.
The difference between the two biographies (apart from one being typed and the other one hand-written) is that somewhere between the two, Wilmoth acquired Mary Gardiner’s surviving diaries from her grand-daughter Mary Harriet’s husband, William Austin.
Wilmoth's initial hero worship of John Gardiner in his first biography—meticulously gathered through the admiring accounts of men who knew him—gives way to a significant confession that the man was Not a Very Good Husband. 78-year-old Wilmoth extends Mary considerable compassion throughout his manuscript. But he struggled with the way John treated Mary and whether to document it; as seen in the way he first wrote and then crossed out certain passages portraying their relationship negatively.
But I’ll talk more about that when I eventually write the book!
A “pioneer woman”
In her excellent 2006 article “Examining the Myth of the Pioneer Woman”, Jessica Mowbray describes how in the 1930s, to create a positive national identity, Australia’s historians painted white female settlers as “courageous and capable, nurturing and always maternal… she is a good and self-sacrificing woman: the angel in the home gone bush.”
Women like Mary Gardiner, who struggled with the aching loneliness and suffered emotionally from the monotony of an exceptionally hard life in the bush did not conform to the “pioneer woman” myth. And so… they were left out of it.
Below is the most well-known extract of Mary Gardiner’s diary: covering her journey to Port Phillip from Eden, on the NSW coast. It shows her intelligence, wit and attitude.
Wilmoth included it as an appendix in the Gardiners of Gardiner’s Creek. This is very helpful because the diary itself is currently held in the University of Cambridge’s Library in London, having previously belonged to the Royal Commonwealth Society. I can’t financially justify going there just to look at it.
You know when people rave to you about a place or experience and how amazing it is and when you finally get there, you think, ‘meh’? Well, that’s how Mary Gardiner felt about the entire experience of sailing to Melbourne in 1837.
She comes across as a woman with no more shits to give.
Mary Gardiner describes the voyage from Sydney to Port Phillip Bay
When she wrote these entries in her diary, Mary was 35 and a mother of one, her ten-year-old daughter Anna Maria. They are onboard “Regia”, sailing from Sydney to Melbourne. The family had been living in Van Diemen's Land since 1823 and John had decided to move them all to Port Phillip so he could speculate on land investment.
He did not consult her about this decision.
She writes:
Tuesday 14th [Sydney, NSW]. Yesterday we came on board. Oh, the nausea and weariness attending board on ship even when actual sickness does not confine one to the berth. A strong southernly wind attended with rain preventing my going on deck to enjoy the surrounding scenery, which is undoubtedly beautiful. The bay completely landlocked and interspersed with numerous singular ships, islands (on some of which are establishments formed by government) are ornamented by surrounding hills and cultivated ground. They have a pleasing and most interesting effect particularly when one thinks back to the humble origin of the almost neglected town of Sydney. Tonight, I have given Anna Maria a colonic in hope of carrying off the bile and lessening the attack of seasickness.
Twofold Bay, 20 March 1837. We sailed from Sydney on the 13th and encountered a strong southerly gale, violent squalls caused distressing seasickness. Anna Maria, as before, the worst sufferer. On Monday 20th, I thankfully saw anchor cast in Jervis Bay where the “Francis Freeching” had taken shelter before us. The bay is copious and the scenery pretty. Opposite the bay is a small island at low water almost connected with the main. Numerous rocks which the sea lashed in its fury and tossed up the boiling white foam high in the air. But it's boundary had been set and it could not pass over into the bay which they protected from the roaring wind and the turbulent ocean.
On Wednesday 22nd we got underway having a favourable wind which lasted only until midnight.
Oh, how heart sickening are those words "the wind has changed" when just the moment before you had been congratulating yourself that you were laying, or rather the ship is laying her course.
I never can understand these nautical terms, going after seven or eight knots an hour and probably calculating in your mind the number of days and hours it may take you to reach your destination with a continuance of the fair gale. All Thursday and Thursday night we were driven to and fro on the mighty deep at the entrance to Bass Strait off Cape Howe. When the captain found it utterly impossible to proceed the wind being right ahead, ordered the ship about and after a sail for a few hours we dropped anchor in the bay.
It is apparently uninteresting apart from some evidence of Dr Inlay’s establishment for shipping stock to VDL [Van Diemen’s Land]. Three vessels lie alongside us too similarly situated to [illegible] obliged to run in from distress of weather, the [illegible ship name] belonging to the establishment and in which my beloved brother George went to Mauritius and India when Captain Briggs had command of her and in which he met his death from, I believe, too much of the extreme heat of the scorching sun of that last mentioned place.
The natives have been bravely engaged today in fishing seated in their singular looking canoes. They are an indolent, useless race but I trust not incapable of civilisation.
Tuesday 28th-29th. Today a southerly wind springing up, we loosened anchor. The sails commenced to fill and we bade adieu to Twofold Bay, though too slowly, the wind not being fair until we got outside the Heads, upon which appeared the Isabella bound for PP [Port Phillip] with all her canvas stretched.
The wind again changed round [Mallacoota]. We kept tacking upon the tack what we're gained upon the other.
Friday 31st. Yesterday and today we have had a beautiful run through the Strait passing quite close to most intimidating rocks.
Saturday April 1st 1837. Again baffled when almost at our destination. 6 o'clock “about ship” is the order and we are off to the southward. This is tedious. The wafting of the wind, the raging of the waves and the pitching of a vessel have no charms for me.
People may talk of the beauty of a ship sailing gallantly over unfathomable depths, her sails filled with the wind or in the words of the poet as well I remember them “she walks the waters like a thing of life” but let me admire her with terra firma under my feet.
I feel no enjoyment in being called upon to notice how beautiful she seems on the waves when at the very moment, perhaps I expect her bowsprit would have been buried deep or to be told with the joyful countenance that she really swims like a duck.
I feel somewhat similar to what a parent does when their offspring is commended, that least agreeable is the loudest laugh when a sea dust over drenching rain unfortunately we get and the joyous cry “who got that?”
Sunday 2nd 37. At last we have entered the heads of PP. They are very unpretentious and unassuming than can possibly be imagined to such a spacious harbour, the land being quite low, the entrance very narrow and not perceptible until you are close upon it so much so that the captain was a long time doubtful whether it could be the place or not.
The man in the chains kept yelling, “by the deep four,” [the depth of the water is four fathoms, around 27 feet] “quarter this there" and gradually declining in his account of the depth of the water. The passengers alternatively stared at each other with countenances indicating astonishment and dread at the man issuing these disagreeable sounds.
The fault lay in that the sea no longer is a deep clear and open but black and muddy. The captain with looks of anger and I must write it, contempt, a shake of the head, a shrug of the shoulders conveying his sentiments to each call. For not a word was spoken that they lose hearing that dull monotonous voice telling the depth of the water.
“How much have you now sir,” called the captain. “Two fathoms, sir,” replied the man.
But of what use was this interrogation? Then we struck bump succeeded bump and then all found the use of the organ of speech and expressed their opinions.
“I knew we would be upon the main Bank,” said one. “Why does he not take in sail?" cried another. “We are getting deeper in the mud,” ejaculated a third.
As for myself, I know not what I said but well do I remember my feelings.
I offered up a short prayer to Him whose path is in the water and whose footsteps are in the deep to be our protector and felt thus terrified, though my teeth continued to chatter and my knees to shake. I almost fancied I could hear them rattling in their sockets.
Eight o'clock. They have just succeeded in getting the vessel into deep water and have anchored for the night.
April 3rd 37. It has taken us all day to beat up the bay which is, I understand, 30 miles from the entrance to the mouth of the Yarra Yarra and has much more the appearance of an inland sea than a bay. An amazing large shark swam around the ship and round for a long time. They compared its length to upwards of 20 feet. About an hour ago we anchored inside Gellibrand Point. A fire burning at the entrance enabled the captain to venture in, it being a very dark night.
How delightfully sounding the chain cable as it came out! Sincerely do I hope that never again may the words of the depth fall upon my ears but that we may find next peace and quietness in the new settlement. I am weary of moving about. We make the seventh vessel that's lying off Gellibrand Point.
Yarra Yarra River June 22nd 1837. I shall endeavour to trace back a few leading events since the third of last April and endeavor to keep a regular journal.
On Wednesday 5th April we left the Regia in the captain’s boat to proceed up the Yarra Yarra to the newly settled and newly (illegible) town of Melbourne, named in complement to the Premier. It is situated at least nine miles from Gellibrand Point where a vessel of any burden is obliged to cast anchor. It is past mud flats rendering it impossible for them to proceed any further. This is undoubtedly a great drawback to the town and will eventually cause it to be moved to the opposite side whereby erecting a jetty vessel may onboard closer to the shore.
It is no more than three miles from the present town to the open bay and the country being flat. Nature with little expense and labour would open a safe canal between the two places and avoid the present disagreeable navigation over mud flats on which I found anything but comfortable particularly... [I don’t know if the ellipse here was in the diary or Wilmoth's transcription] as the ground on either side of the boat was continually to the water’s edge and we carrying at the time what appeared to be a very heavy press of canvas. After tacking about for some time we entered the Yarra Yarra.
From the account I received from some of the other passengers respecting its beauty I was led, I suppose, to expect too much and was consequently disappointed.
There is a sameness in the river to me most uninteresting though not without a beauty of a singular nature to a European eye. Similar to how many of our nautical captains have so energetically described the West Indies.
Luxurious foliage grow[s] at each side into the water forming, in many parts, most grotesque arches overhead and causing a dread that the roots might be underground and that one of these stately trees might give way and sink you to the bottom.
Between the trees abound reeds of enormous size, some upward of seven feet high. This causes the land to be quite impeachable to our eager searching eyes. Aside from in one or two parts, where the recent Settler has cut them down to thatch his cottage with.
But oh, what a different appearance will it present in the course of seven or eight years when highly cultivated grain, handsome gardens and elegant villas will adorn each side. I hope sincerely, however, that the future occupied in my Mind's Eye of all these luxuries will have sufficient taste to retain many clusters of those splendid mimosas which are now perfuming the air with the most delightful fragrance.
About 1 o'clock we arrived at Melbourne where we were most hospitably and kindly received.
And that is where the extract ends.
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