However, 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.

[4] His elder brother Frank succeeded to the marquessate upon their father's death in 1870,[5] and his sister Isabella Sara married in 1886, Sir Norman Montgomery Abercrombie Campbell, 10th Baronet.

[6] In 1868 Christopher Palmerston, in a departure from the theatrical heritage of his family, was employed as a stockman on the Willangi cattle station near St Lawrence in the Broadsound area of central coastal Queensland.

While droving cattle to Rockhampton in early 1869, Palmerston rode off on one of his employer's horses and sold the saddle to a stable owner.

As Palmerston became more well known as a path cutter, he embarked on more explorations, including his notable discovery of a route along the Mowbray River, which contributed to the founding of Port Douglas.

In the centre of the ground were dug two long parallel rows of oval-shaped holes, filled with crouching figures, that portion just below the armpits and upwards being the only exposed parts.

Their legs and arms were akimbo, and their nodding heads accompanied a bantering vein of cockatoo screeches, which ended occasionally with roars of mirth.

[10] In 1880, 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.

On the King River, Mulligan wrote about how Palmerston shot two Aboriginal men and returned to camp with a stolen "little blackboy".