13 Facts About Christie Palmerston

Christie Palmerston led several expeditions during the last quarter of the 19th century including the discovery of a route along the Mowbray River, which eventually led to the founding of Port Douglas.

However, Christie Palmerston was born in Melbourne, at the time in the Colony of New South Wales, unless he was younger than normally thought, to Casino Jerome Carandini, the 10th Marquis of Sarzano and Marie Burgess, an English-born opera singer.

Christie Palmerston was arrested for horse stealing and later convicted.

Christie Palmerston appealed the decision but it was dismissed and he was sentenced to two years in a Brisbane prison.

Old timers on the field noted that while Christie Palmerston never seemed to do any mining he was always flush with gold and rumours abounded that Christie Palmerston, with his Aboriginal men, were murdering miners for their gold.

However, it was not until around 1876 during the Hodgkinson River Gold Rush that Christie Palmerston began to be known as a pathfinder.

Towards the end of the 1880s on the Russell River field, as the field played out and was abandoned by European miners, Christie Palmerston induced Chinese miners to come to the diggings by promising them certified amounts of gold per day and guaranteeing protection from Aboriginal attack.

Christie Palmerston boasted of shooting a large number of Aboriginals in Mamu territory.

Christie Palmerston wrote that afterwards he reduced "heaps of war implements to ashes" and took two young boys as captives.

In 1880, Christie Palmerston was 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.

Christie Palmerston settled down in Townsville and married Teresa Rooney at St Joseph's Church on 6 December 1886; they had one daughter.

Christie Palmerston moved to Borneo and then Malaya where he contracted fever in the jungle and died at Kuala Pilah on 15 January 1897.

Christie Palmerston's life was the subject of a 1957 radio feature on the Australian Broadcasting Commission, The Legend of Christie Palmerston.