His mother's family had owned slaves in the British West Indies until the abolition of slavery in the 1830s, and had received significant financial compensation for the loss of their property.

Gordon began to lead a wild and aimless life, contracted debts, and was a great anxiety to his father, who at last decided that his son should go to Australia and make a fresh start in 1853 to join the mounted police with a letter of introduction to the governor.

Adam Lindsay Gordon also acted as groom for a period to senior South Australian Police Officer Alexander Tolmer.

The interest in horse-racing, which he had shown as a youth in England, was continued in Australia, and in a letter written in November 1854, he mentioned that he had a horse for the steeplechase at the next meeting.

The ship broke up, many perished (see main article), and many heroic feats were attempted, including an epic horse ride to Mount Gambier to summon help.

From near this spot in July, 1864, Gordon made his famed leap on horseback over an old post and rail guard fence onto a narrow ledge overlooking the Blue Lake and jumped back again onto the roadway.

[7]On 11 January 1865, he received a deputation asking him to stand for parliament and was elected by three votes to the South Australian House of Assembly on 16 March 1865 for the district of Victoria.

[9] He found a good friend in wealthy fellow parliamentarian John Riddoch of Penola, and was a frequent guest at his grand residence "Yallum".

In spite of short sight, he was becoming very well known as a gentleman rider, and on 10 October 1868, actually won three races in one day at the Melbourne Hunt Club steeplechase meeting.

He made a little money out of his racing and became a member of the Yorick Club, where he was friendly with Marcus Clarke, George Gordon McCrae, and a little later Henry Kendall.

He had for some time been endeavouring to show that he was heir to the estate of Esslemont in Scotland, but there was a flaw in the entail, and in June, he learnt that his claim must be abandoned.

He had seen his last book, Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes, through the press, and it was published on 23 June 1870; it was not successful at the time, but is now regarded as one of the most important pieces of Australian literature.

In the decades following Gordon's death, his work continued to draw increasing praise from literary figures and the public at large, and especially in Melbourne, he was exalted as a genius and a national poet.

Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde counted among his admirers, the latter hailing him as "one of the finest poetic singers the English race has ever known".

Critics dismissed some of Gordon's poetry as careless and banal, but conceded that, at his best, he is a poet of importance, who on occasions wrote some magnificent lines.

Douglas Sladen, a lifelong admirer, in his Adam Lindsay Gordon, The Westminster Abbey Memorial Volume, made a selection of 27 poems that occupy about 90 pages.

In 1886, inspired by a paper titled "The Open Air Elements in Gordon's Poems", members of the Melbourne bohemian artists' society the Buonarotti Club illustrated studies of his poetry.

After a particularly trying year for the British Royal Family, Elizabeth II quoted from one of Gordon's more famous poems in her Christmas Message of 1992, "Kindness in another's trouble, courage in one's own..", but did not mention the poet's name.