1864-5 Jardine brothers' Cape York Peninsula expedition
Following their father's appointment as Government Resident and Police Magistrate at a new settlement to be established at Somerset at the tip of Cape York Peninsula, brothers Francis Lascelles ("Frank") Jardine and Alexander William ("Alex") Jardine travelled overland to Somerset with a herd of livestock to set up a cattle station to support the new outpost.
The brothers left Rockhampton in May 1864 in separate groups, which eventually rendezvoused at John Graham MacDonald's Carpentaria Downs station on the Einasleigh River. From there, the remaining thousand kilometres were largely unexplored territory. Edmund Kennedy's 1848 expedition had travelled along the Peninsula's east coast; Dutch seamen, Matthew Flinders and an assortment of British navigators had passed along the west coast: Ludwig Leichhardt had crossed the Peninsula towards its southern end, but no one had travelled across country west of the Great Dividing Range.
The ten-man party — the Jardine brothers, three stockmen, a surveyor and four Native Mounted Police troopers left Carpentaria Downs on 11 October 1864 with 42 horses and 250 head of cattle. After five months travelling over difficult country with at least six major river crossings and several clashes with the indigenous population — the Jardines summed up the expedition by saying: "We shot our way through! —, the expedition completed its journey on 2 March 1865. The most significant clash on 18 December 1864 became known as the Battle of the Mitchell.
The ten-man party were in poor health when they reached Somerset with a dozen horses and fifty cattle. Thirty horses, two hundred cattle and at least two hundred Aboriginal people lay in their wake — Frank Jardine claimed to have personally accounted for forty-seven — but the brothers were elected Fellows of the Royal Geographical Society and received the Society's Murchison Award in 1886.
Sources:
Bolton, G.C. A Thousand Miles Away: A History of North Queensland to 1920
Frederick J. Byerley, Narrative Of The Overland Expedition Of The Messrs. Jardine, From Rockhampton To Cape York, Northern Queensland. Brisbane, J. W. Buxton, 1867; Sydney, Angus And Robertson--1949
Cairns Post, Story Of The Jardines Told By Ion Idriess: Feat In Australian Exploration, 5 December 1940, p. 9 (Trove: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/42243968
Sunny Feiler-Clark, Jardine family’s brutal Queensland history, The Junction: https://junctionjournalism.com/2024/06/04/jardine-familys-brutal-queensland-history/
Robert Logan Jack, Northmost Australia
Wikipedia: Francis Lascelles Jardine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Lascelles_Jardine
