Kathleen Elizabeth Gardiner (1903–2001) (née Howell) was an Australian motorist best known for her twentieth-century motor tours of Australia with her school friend, Jean Beatson.
Kathleen Gardiner was born on 13 December 1903 in Richmond, Victoria to Elizabeth Mary Irwin and Frederick Thomas Howell.
[1] She attended the Clyde School in Melbourne, where she met her best friend and future motoring partner, Jean Beatson.
[2][6] Gardiner and Beatson drove through Mount Gambier, Adelaide, the Central Desert to Oodnadatta and Alice Springs, and on to Darwin, often following the telegraph line and staying at repeater stations overnight.
[3][9] Gardiner and her friend Beatson also had pilot's licenses and so, after the Rally, they drove on to the UK to participate in recreational flying.