Edward Palmer

Born in 1842, Edward Palmer was an Australian pastoralist, public servant, and politician whose writing grew out of direct experience in North Queensland. He is best known for Early Days in North Queensland, a memoir-like historical work published after his death that looks back on the region's early pastoral expansion and the people who shaped it.

Palmer went to Queensland as a young man and became closely involved in the pastoral life of the north. He later served in the Queensland Legislative Assembly and also worked in public service, including as a stock inspector. Those roles gave him an unusual mix of practical bush experience and public responsibility, which helps explain the detail and authority in his writing.

He died in 1899. Although he was active in politics, he is often remembered most for preserving a first-person account of colonial Queensland at a time of rapid change, making his work especially interesting to readers of frontier history and Australian memoir.