[3] His son S. T. Gill opened rooms at Gawler Place, Adelaide where he advertised portrait work and local scenery, "executed to order".

With public interest in the new medium not forthcoming, Gill sold his camera to Robert Hall prior to his departure with John Horrocks' expedition northwards to the Flinders Ranges later in 1846.

This expedition was the first in Australia to use camels but even so ended after Horrocks accidentally discharged his gun and received a charge of shot in his face.

[5] Upon his return Gill organised an exhibition to sell the watercolours and pencil sketches of this fateful trip but sales appear to have been slow and he was eventually forced to raffle them.

It is possible he tried his hand at gold-mining but presumably he had no luck as he was soon recording life on the gold fields and the emergence of substantial towns like those of Ballarat and Bendigo.

Blundell's son recalls that in 1853 Gill used this studio to work his designs directly on stone using a glass to aid him in the necessary reversals.

The stones were then sent to Campbell and Fergusson's workshop a few doors away, where the reproduction work was carried out, and the resulting prints were returned to Blundell and Co. bearing the names of both the lithographer and publisher.

[5] At the height of this success Gill decided to move to Sydney where he worked on the publication of views of New South Wales, and a Kangaroo hunt, with Allen and Wigley.

[5] He also procured a major commission from the Trustees of the Melbourne Public Library in 1869, to reproduce 40 of his earlier watercolours of life on the Victorian goldfields.

[4] At the same time as the Melbourne Public Library commission, Gill prepared a largely identical set of 53 watercolours under the title drawing of The Goldfields of Victoria During 1852–53.

He frequented the resorts of the bohemians of the day such as Cafe de Paris, Charlie Wright's dancing-rooms, the bars of the Theatre Royal or Stutt's Buffet.