author
Frank Lascelles Jardine
1841–1919
A frontier figure from colonial Queensland, he is remembered for the dramatic overland journey to Cape York that helped make his name. His life at Somerset placed him at the center of the far north’s rough, contested history.
1 Audiobook
Narrative of the Overland Expedition of the Messrs. Jardine from Rockhampton to Cape York, Northern Queensland
by Frank Lascelles Jardine, Alexander Jardine
About the author
Born in Scotland on 28 August 1841, Frank Lascelles Jardine moved with his family to Australia and grew up in a household closely tied to early Queensland settlement. He became known in the 1860s when he and his brother Alexander drove cattle overland from Rockhampton to the Cape York Peninsula, a difficult expedition that became one of the best-known journeys in northern Australian history.
Jardine spent much of his life at Somerset, near the tip of Cape York, where his family held land and influence. He was long associated with pioneering life in the Torres Strait and far north Queensland, and later accounts remembered him as one of the region’s best-known settlers.
Today, he is a notable but complicated historical figure. Older biographies emphasized exploration and frontier endurance, while more recent accounts also place him within the violent realities of colonization and Aboriginal dispossession in northern Australia. He died at Somerset on 19 March 1919.