Christy Palmerston – the man versus the legend

by Bartle Frere

(Adapted from the Townsville Daily Bulletin, 11th January, 1946. While the article paints Christie Palmerston as an heroic explorer with an unblemished character, he was actually quite a violent man who thought nothing of robbing white prospectors, and murdering both Chinese diggers and Aborigines when it suited him. But more on that later.)

In 1874 explorer James Venture Mulligan (who had discovered payable gold on the Palmer in 1873, and whose report led to the sensational rush) led another expedition from Cooktown to the Upper Mitchell River. He then discovered the St. George River, which he named in honour of the mining warden, and the McLeod River, which he named after a member of his prospecting party. Both these rivers are tributaries of the Mitchell. On this expedition explorer Mulligan was assisted by a young prospector named Christie Palmerston, who had been mining on the Palmer goldfield. This man was destined to play a very important part in the future development of the coastal district lying between Cooktown and Cardwell. Along this stretch of coast we now have the ports of Port Douglas, Cairns, Innisfail and Mourilyan Harbour, and the sugar mill areas of Mossman, Hambledon, Mulgrave, Babinda, Goondi, Mourilyan, South Johnstone and Tully. Many of the original tracks leading from the Daintree, Mossman, Barron, Mulgrave, Russell, North Johnstone, South Johnstone and Tully rivers to inland centres such at Thornborough, Coolgarra and Herberton, were explored by Palmerston. The East Palmerston and West Palmerston areas, lying west of Innisfail, on the Palmerston Highway to Millaa Millaa and Ravenshoe, commemorate the name of this remarkable man.

To obtain some reliable description of the dense jungle country explored by Palmerston during this period and lying between the Daintree River, on the north, and the Tully River on the south, we will refer to the narrative of explorer William Hann, after he had travelled to the head of The Daintree, in October, 1872. “At our feet,” stated Hann, “lay miles of thick and impenetrable scrub, covering ridges and gullies alike; to have ventured into it, with or without horses, would have been sheer madness, as the sea lay miles away, not even in sight. The prospect was worse than anything seen by us hitherto. Cape Tribulation and the country for miles around its base was a sea of scrub, which extended as far as our vision in a southerly direction. We turned away from the prospect with a dismal sensation of disappointment, as we had hopes that this was one way out, whereas, it proved a gate shutting us in more completely than ever. But still there was one other hope, and that was the road indicated by the natives, so we buoyed ourselves up for another trial, and returned to camp.”

On 12th October, 1872, Hann started early, accompanied by three companions with a native guide. Two or three miles to the south-east a site was selected for his camp. One of the party was sent back to bring up the expedition to this point and the others penetrated about six miles further to the south-east and got on a high hill.

“Our doom is sealed,” stated Hann. “All further progress south is debarred us, and the retreat to the westward has become imperative. It is now a case of personal safety. I saw at once how completely I was frustrated in my desire to reach the coast, which, if I had reached it, would have wrecked the expedition. From this eminence I had a view of the whole country beneath us. Towards the sea stretched miles of broken country, densely covered with scrub of an impenetrable character. To the south, the Dividing Range towered to an immense height, forbidding approach, and also covered with scrub, which seemed to spread over the whole country. The range ended abruptly over the sea, and as far as I could discern, maintained the same character south, as far as visible. There my last hope vanished, and I descended the hill with a feeling of disappointment exceeded by anything I had felt the previous day, when I found my first road was shut against me. I have struggled ahead, but to no purpose; all my endeavours have been frustrated by the completely impassable nature of the country for white men with horses.”

Hann had been informed by an old aboriginal through his native interpreter, that there was no possibility of reaching the sea – that they themselves reached it by canoes which came up saltwater creeks to within a few miles of their camp. The navigable channel thus indicated was the Daintree River.

Dr. R. L. Jack, formerly Government Geologist for Queensland, referring to this incident of Hann’s Expedition states: “It was by the grace of God that Hann had the wisdom to admit his defeat. Had he been endowed with the unbending pertinacity or obstinacy of Kennedy, he would have gone on at all risks to perish with his whole party.”

In the period 1873 to 1880 the Palmer country swarmed with bands of armed whites. Thousands of Chinese miners toiled for the alluvial gold in the river beds and gullies along the Palmer River and its tributaries, many of them in isolated camps or on stretches of the bush tracks such as Battle Camp or Hell’s Gates. Many were waylaid and robbed of their gold, which was carried in chamois leather pouches. As tons of gold were carried away from the Palmer and as an unascertained quantity was sent to the coast and taken to China by miners returning home, this would create a temptation amongst less fortunate and evil-minded tramps to acquire some wealth while it was being carried along the bush tracks from Palmerville to Laura, and thence to Cooktown. (Ed. Note: Palmerston openly declared his hatred for the Chinese early in the piece. In this he had an ally of virtually every European miner in the north).

After the conclusion of J. V. Mulligan’s expedition to the St. George and McLeod Rivers in 1874, Christie Palmerston discovered the Daintree Pass and from 1875 to 1885 he spent his time exploring the virgin country which was bounded on the north by the Daintree River, on the south by the Tully River, on the east by the Pacific coast, and on the west by the Hodgkinson, Thornborough and Herberton goldfields.

Pompo and Christie Palmerston

Palmerston was really a mystery man. No one appeared to know exactly who he was, nor whence he came, nor where he was going. Probably in the early days of the Palmer diggings, when miners rushed there from all the Australian colonies, as well as from New Zealand and other countries, people did not make any searching inquiries. But, when Palmerston had established his reputation as a ‘prince of pathfinders’ and had carried out most difficult exploration work from the Hodgkinson goldfield to the present site of Port Douglas, and on the country surrounding Herberton, as well as between Mourilyan Harbour and Coolgarra, then inhabitants in the settled districts began to interest themselves in his strange career. (Editor’s note: This article perpetuated the legend that Palmerston was an Englishman, the natural son of Viscount Palmerston, former Prime Minister of Great Britain, but the reality was Palmerston was born in Melbourne, the son of Casino Jerome Carandini, the 10th Marquis of Sarzano, and Marie Burgess, an Englishborn opera singer. Palmerston was baptised Cristofero Palmerston Carandini and this is the name he gives on his marriage registration in 1886, when he listed his father as Casino Carandini.) Palmerston arrived in Queensland about the time of the discovery of the Palmer goldfield. There is no evidence that the youthful Palmerston acquired any great wealth on the diggings, but his nomadic life there gave him a valuable knowledge of bushcraft and the mode of life amongst the blacks. This was to prove of great assistance to him when he cut himself off from all contact with the civilised world, and lived in the dense jungle on the banks of rivers such as the Mulgrave, Russell, North Johnstone, South Johnstone and Tully, without supplies of fresh beef, bread, tea, sugar, salt, milk, fruit, vegetables or other such articles of food which we regard as necessaries.

It has been stated that at the time Palmerston entered upon his exploration work, he was on the point of being questioned by the Maytown police regarding his movements and activities at Battle Camp, and Gates of Hell on the tracks leading from Endeavour Inlet to the diggings and that he was virtually a fugitive from justice.

With the frequent movements of diggers from the southern colonies to the mining fields of North Queensland (extending from the Fanning River to the Cape River, and later to the Gilbert and the Etheridge, thence south again to Ravenswood and Charters Towers, and finally northwards to the most sensational alluvial field of the lot, the Palmer River, in the Mitchell River country), is was perhaps inevitable that occasionally young men on the track, between the various newly discovered goldfields would be wrongly or even maliciously accused of some attempted highway robbery and other such offences. That said, in 1869 while working as a drover, Palmerston had been convicted of horse stealing and sentenced to two years in a Brisbane prison.

To get some perspective of this scattered auriferous country during the first 10 years of Townsville’s existence, we must bear in mind that in 1866, the year after Cleveland Bay (Townsville), had been proclaimed a port of entry, payable gold had been found at Keelbottom Creek, not from the Main Range, by two Peak Downs miners, Gibson and Seymour. These men took into the township of Dalrymple the first parcel of gold which had been offered for sale in North Queensland. Prior to that, W. A. Ross had discovered some gold near the Fanning River. His name is commemorated in Ross River, Ross Creek and Ross Island (very early name places in the Townsville district). To him is due the credit of the first successful prospector for gold in the northern division of Queensland.

Dalrymple, named after explorer George Elphinstone Dalrymple, was the principal inland township at that period. There were no railway lines in North Queensland then, and all roads from Bowen, Townsville, and Cardwell, on the coast to the large pastoral holdings and the newly discovered mining fields of the inland, converged on Dalrymple. This settlement was situated in the south west of the Burdekin River, about 75 miles from Townsville and 160 miles from Bowen. It had been settled shortly after Bowen (1861), and before Townsville (1864).

Palmerston photographed with Malays a short time before he contracted fever and died

After the discovery of payable gold at Keelbottom Creek in 1866, a rush set in from Bowen to the Star River Diggings, in the same locality. From these mining fields, Townsville began to receive gold exports and this assisted the progress of the new seaport on Cleveland Bay. Soon after the Star River gold was produced on the Cape, and also at Specimen Gully, and Gehan’s Flat (seven miles nearer Townsville). Very soon there was a rush of 3,000 men from the southern goldfields to the North Queensland fields. The miners of the Upper Cape River, 15 miles from the main camp, gradually moved north to the Gilbert River. In 1869 mining was commenced on the Gilbert Goldfield, in 1870 on the Ravenswood Goldfield, in 1872 on the Charters Towers Goldfield, and in 1873 on the Etheridge Goldfield and the Palmer Goldfield. There was no railway communication anywhere in the north. Supplies were delivered from the sea ports by horsedrawn wagons, or packhorses. The stretch of coastal country lying between Cardwell (Rockingham Bay) and Cooktown (on Endeavour Inlet), was a continuing mass of dense scrub, inhabited by wild blacks. In 1871 Admiral John Moresby (R.N.) then in command of Her Majesty’s cruiser Basilisk described the aboriginals in the coastal district north of Cardwell as follows: “Various tribes of Aborigines range about the vicinity and, not unnaturally, regard the white men who are rapidly dispossessing them of their homes as mortal enemies. They show this feeling by committing murders and outrages, and suffer terrible retaliation at the hands of our countrymen, who employ native troopers, commanded by white men, to hunt down and destroy the offenders.” When Palmerston entered this coastal belt, extending 200 miles from Cooktown to Cardwell, with a depth from the eastern coast to the goldfields in the hinterland of about 75 miles, he did not organise a party of botanists, geologists and zoologists, with carters, labourers and shepherds, as well as horses and carts, and with a flock of sheep for food, as explorer Kennedy had in 1848, when he set out from Rockingham Bay, near the present town of Tully. Palmerston kept coldly aloof from his fellow white men and lived in the scrub and jungle like a native. Leading this life he probably carried small medical supplies, maps and instruments, and relied on his own weapons for personal protection and on the jungle for his food, such as wild game, fish, wild fruits and nuts. He must have accustomed his stomach to the diet of the wild blacks, and he was certainly trusted by the natives, as they appear to have rendered him every assistance in his exploits, where they had previously offered violence and molestation to Kennedy and the other early arrivals in this coastal country. Palmerston had a deep knowledge of the Palmer River country leading towards the Bloomfield and Daintree Rivers.

Prior to this departure from the gold diggings, when officers of the Native Police sought to interview him, Palmerston would vanish out of sight and, by using the mountain passes then known to him in the scrub country, would travel across a district in two days, which the mounted police would spend a week in encirclement. At one stage of his career, Palmerston made his camp at Cedar Creek near the present site at Ravenshoe. From this base he could reach the head waters of the Tully River, which he could follow in an easterly direction to the coast near the present site of Tully Sugar Mill. He could also reach the head waters of the North and South Johnstone Rivers, either of which he could follow in an easterly direction towards the present site of Innisfail, at the confluence of these two rivers – a few miles from the Pacific coast – on to the Mourilyan Harbour. On the north, near the future site of Moomin, he could reach the head waters of the Wild River (the main head of the Herbert River, which flows south through the Ingham district to Hinchinbrook Channel) and he could also reach the head waters of the Walsh River, which flows west to the Mitchell River and the Gulf of Carpentaria, and at Moomin he would be near the head waters of the Barron River, which flows north to the present site of Biboohra and thence easterly by way of the Barron Falls to Trinity Bay, near Cairns.

Palmerston also established a camp at Palmerston Rocks, on the north side of Berner’s Creek, on the present highway named after him and leading from Innisfail to Millaa Millaa and Ravenshoe.

Palmerston’s daughter, Rosina Marie (Carandini) Vaughn-Smith (1889 – 1935) became an accomplished musician

When the agitation for railway communication between the Herberton goldfield and the Pacific coast was brought to the notice of the Queensland Government, he opened a track from Mourilyan Harbour to Coolgarra. He also lived in camp at the Russell River Diggings, Towalia Goldfield and Boonjie, and after displaying nuggets of gold obtained by him in these localities to the chairman and councillors of the Johnstone Shire Council – then Divisional Board – at Innisfail he undertook to guide prospectors through the jungle to the auriferous areas near Mt. Battle Frere. His sole companion on many of his hazardous undertakings was his faithful aboriginal boy, Pompey (correct spelling Pompo). (Editor’s note: This is the only mention of Pompo. Men who lived away from towns sometimes kidnapped aboriginal boys as servants, companions and/or for sexual servitude. Probably seeing a white man for the first time, young Pompo proved intelligent and resourceful. He quickly learned English and adapted to the alien lifestyle. Meanwhile, Palmerston learned from Pompo about traditional foods, medicines, language, and native tracks. Undoubtedly much of the credit given Palmerston as the ‘prince of pathfinders’ belonged to his uncredited companion, usually dismissed as ‘Palmerston’s black boy’). The Jordan Goldfield was opened by prospectors McNeil and Donaldson in 1897, but Palmerston had previously named Henrietta and Rosina Creeks, in honour or his relatives, many years before. During his long period of jungle dwelling Palmerston must have learned how to construct a mia mia (Editor’s note: No doubt Pompo had a hand in teaching him) from lawyer cane vines and branches of trees to shelter himself from the heavy tropical rains, as he does not appear to have carried any camp equipment, and he is certain to have learned the food value of snakes and grubs when supplies of scrub hens, scrub turkeys, fish, and eggs ran out. The blacks’ method of making fire by causing a friction from a rapidly revolving round length of hardwood, about half an inch in diameter and 18 inches long in a central hole of a flat piece of dry soft wood, had no doubt been carefully observed by him early in his Palmer days. He would require some substitute for his matches during the vicissitudes of a long sojourn in the dense tropical jungle. His journeys through the rain forests between the present sites of Innisfail and Millaa Millaa, and his passage across swiftly flowing mountain streams would soon diminish his supplies. He would also have acquired the art of trapping birds and fish, locating the eggs of scrub turkeys and scrub hens in their laying mounds, and robbing the wild bees of their honey in the forks of tall trees. It is probable that Palmerston carried very little money, as he could obtain rations in the few northern settlements on his infrequent visits there by trading his gold nuggets with the storekeepers. The Queensland Government at that period (1875-85) was faced with great pioneering difficulties in opening up this country of mountain, jungle and scrub situated more than 1,000 miles from the seat of Government (Brisbane). The value of this man with uncanny jungle instinct, was officially recognised and he was encouraged to search for suitable road and railway routes from the Thornborough and later the Herberton goldfields to suitable ports in the Pacific coast.

He discovered a track from the inaccessible tableland country to Mourilyan Harbour which in later years enabled cattle to be brought from the Evelyn Tableland to the Johnstone River, when the Hon. T. H. Fitzgerald built the first sugar mill in the Innisfail district in 1880. In the year 1876 the town of Cairns was founded on Trinity Inlet, as an outlet for the Hodgkinson Goldfield, but the access to that port proved difficult from the hinterland, even when two pack tracks (Smith’s and Douglas’s) had been cleared and £10,000 had been spent on the Thornborough Road from Smithfield to the Middle Crossing at Kuranda. In the month of April, 1877, reports were received that Palmerston had found a road to the coast at White Cliffs but no safe anchorage could be found. On 30th June, 1877, the S.S. Corea, in charge of Captain D. H. Owen, called at Island Point (now Port Douglas), with a party from Cooktown. They were met by a party from White Cliffs about nine miles south. In the month of September, 1877, this port was gazetted Port Douglas, in honour of the Premier of Queensland at that time (Hon. John Douglas, C.M.G. F.R. G.S.). On 1st December, 1877, Port Douglas was declared a port of entry, and a road was opened over the range to the Hodgkinson Goldfield. In the month of February, 1878, the Police Magistrate at Cairns was moved to Port Douglas and early in the year 1879, the Government Lands Office and the District Court were moved from Cairns to Port Douglas. The gold escort from the Hodgkinson had already been diverted to Port Douglas in October, 1878. The discovery of tin at Herberton in May, 1880, was speedily followed by the opening of a road there and in July, 1880, the work of explorer Palmerston in cutting through three miles of scrub at Martintown (now Tolga), made it possible to take loading through to Herberton from Port Douglas.

From this view of Palmerston’s exploration, it can be seen that his work was from 1875 to 1885 almost always that of the pathfinder, opening up tracks and short cuts through jungle and scrub, connecting one small settlement with another, and piercing deep into virgin country, which is now Australia’s richest sugar province. When he had completed his exploration north of Mourilyan Harbour, he accepted an appointment for similar work in southeast Asia by the Straits Development Company. Palmerston moved to Borneo and then Malaya where he contracted fever in the jungle and died at Kuala Pilah on 15th January, 1897. He was 46.

WOULD THE REAL CHRISTIE PALMERSTON PLEASE STAND UP

Palmerston joined the Palmer River gold rush of 1872-1874 but old timers on the field noted that while Palmerston never seemed to do any mining, he was always flush with gold and rumours abounded that he, along with his gang of aboriginal men, either murdered or beat up other miners for their gold. In 1880, Palmerston was again part of a private expedition led by James Venture Mulligan to search for gold at the heads of the King and Lukin rivers in northern Queensland. On the King River, Mulligan wrote about how Palmerston shot two aboriginal men and returned to camp with a stolen ‘little blackboy’. At night, they handcuffed the child to Pompo, Palmerston’s other ‘boy’, to prevent him from escaping. The expedition failed to find any significant signs of gold deposits. Towards the end of the 1880s on the Russell River field, as the field played out and was abandoned by European miners, Palmerston induced Chinese miners to come to the diggings by promising them certified amounts of gold per day and guaranteeing protection from aboriginal attack. He charged them £1 per head and the offer was taken up by 30 miners with a further 200 following soon after. The promises were hollow but then, as a standover man, with the backing of his armed aboriginal gang, he extorted money from the Chinese, prevented supplies from reaching the diggings so that he could charge exorbitant prices for meat, and effectively imprisoned the Chinese diggers by beating up any miner who attempted to leave the field. During the 1880s, large parts of coastal far North Queensland were still covered in dense rainforest. Palmerston boasted of shooting a large number of Aborigines in Mamu territory. According to his diary of the Russell River expedition, in the early hours of the morning of 8th of September 1886, Palmerston and his aboriginal bearers from the neighbouring tribe tracked a group of aboriginal people to a cockatoo bora ground on the western bank of the upper Mulgrave River. Just after dawn, Palmerston and his men opened fire from three sides, the river being on the fourth side. Palmerston wrote that afterwards he reduced “heaps of war implements to ashes” and took two young boys as captives but the boys escaped during the night, “shackles and all”. In 1886, possibly around the 22nd July, Palmerston allegedly raped and murdered an aboriginal woman, on the South Johnstone River. Six months later on 6th December, 1886, he married Teresa Rooney at St Joseph’s Church, Townsville. They had one daughter, Rosina, in 1889, but Palmerston abandoned both of them in 1890 when he left Australia for Borneo and Malaya, never to return.