After a short career in the British army, John Jardine, the youngest brother of the eminent Scottish ornithologist Sir William Jardine, in 1839 decided to emigrate to Australia. In 1861, he served as a police magistrate and gold commissioner at Rockhampton, then became a pioneer settler at Somerset on Cape York where the Jardine River and Jardine National Park are named after him. A keen collector of natural history specimens, he sent bird skins to his brother in Scotland, adding new species to the Australian avifauna. Two Australian birds are named after him.