He had an athletic build, with brown wavy hair and hazel eyes, and he was described as "attractive with a face of a corsair and a smooth voice.

Perhaps realising that this career meant hard work and little money, he and two accomplices stole a large mob of horses from William Morton's station near Serpentine on the Loddon, 40 km northwest of present-day Bendigo.

Most of the convicts were rounded up within days but Gardiner escaped and made his way to New South Wales, perhaps stopping at the station in central Victoria where his father and younger sisters were living.

Calling himself Frank Jones he opened a butcher shop at Spring Creek, Lambing Flat, but was arrested in May 1861 on a cattle-stealing charge and committed for trial but allowed bail.

[9][10] Gardiner joined with Peisley for a short period and was briefly captured after a gunfight with two troopers at Fogg's hut near Reids Flat.

[11] In June 1862 he bailed up the Lachlan Gold Escort near Eugowra with a gang including Ben Hall, Dan Charters and Johnny Gilbert.

In 1863–1864, Gardiner was living with Ben Hall's sister-in-law Kitty Brown, at Apis Creek near Rockhampton, Queensland, where he was running a general store.

The Governor, as representative of the English sovereign, had the power to exercise the Royal prerogative of mercy for felony cases not subject to the death penalty.

By the time it reached the Governor in September 1872 it had attracted the signatures of a number of prominent public men, including members of parliament and the former Colonial Secretary, William Forster.

After consideration, Robinson decided that Gardiner could be eligible for a pardon, but only after he had served ten years incarceration and providing his conduct in prison remained good, conditional upon him leaving the country on release and becoming an exile from the Australian colonies and New Zealand.

Gardiner owned the Twilight Star Saloon on Kearny Street in the Barbary Coast area of San Francisco.

The circumstances of his death are not known with any degree of certainty, due in large part to the loss of records during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.