John Edgar Byrne

John Edgar Byrne or 'Bobby' Byrne (1842–1906), Queensland bushman, Gulf country pioneer turned journalist and newspaper proprietor. Founder and owner-editor of the Queensland Figaro, later known as the Queensland Figaro and Punch.

'Bobby' Byrne was born in Canning Town, East London in 1842, and was of Scottish descent. He had two brothers Julius Byrne, a stockbroker of Gracechurch St London, the other being Dr Theodore E. D. Byrne better known as the "Jumping Dr of Gympie". The latter was originally a surgeon apprenticed to a parish doctor at Islington, but he later signed up as a surgeon superintendent in charge of the immigrant ship 'The Light Brigade', subsequently arriving to Brisbane on 18 May 1863.

'Bobby' Byrne himself presumably came to Queensland around 1860. He earned his spurs and a solid reputation as an Australian 'bushman' during the famed 1860s Gulf country rush. He subsequently worked for several years as a busman and occasional free-lance journalist on Queensland's north western frontier before marriage, urban family life and a full-time position in journalism finally caught up with him. He settled initially in Maryborough in 1871 but was persuaded to move south to Brisbane with his family in late 1878.

Byrne revealed in an obituary in the Figaro in October 1887, that had served on Carl Feilberg's staff on the short-lived Brisbane 'Daily News' in late 1878, adding that he had a friendship with Feilberg dating back to Maryborough in 1871. 'Carl was a mate of mine of some 16 years' standing', he wrote. For that reason alone, it is perhaps not surprising that Byrne and the Figaro in March and April 1883 became the first Queensland journal to take up the mantle from Feilberg and briefly campaign for a change to Queensland's policy towards or Aboriginal people at the frontier. Byrne directed considerable criticism at the new chief editorship of Charles Hardie Buzacott on The Brisbane Courier and its weekly The Queenslander. Buzacott, he claimed, had introduced a censorship on all matters related to the native police, cruelty and violation of the rights of Aboriginal people on the Queensland frontier.

References

• Loader, Beatty Edward: Life of Bobby Byrne from 1924, Manuscript of sixteen handwritten pages introducing the life of John Edgar Byrne (1842–1906), editor and proprietor of the Queensland Figaro & Punch, on which Loader had himself worked as a co-editor from 1899 to 1906 at Fryer Library, (University of Queensland):
• Browne, Reginald Spencer: A Journalist's Memories, Brisbane 1927, page 77, 160, 178 & 186.
• Palmer, Edward: Early Days in North Queensland, London 1902.
• Ørsted-Jensen: Robert: The Right To Live – The Politics of Race and the Troubled Conscience of an Australian Journalist, Chapter ten 'The Figaro and a Struggle Against Silence' (yet unpublished manuscript)