Background
"Bobby" Byrne was born in Canning Town, East London in 1842, and was of Scottish descent.
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John Byrne
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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.
Career
He had two brothers Julius Byrne, a stockbroker of Gracechurch Street London, the other being Doctor Theodore East. Doctorate. Byrne better known as the "Jumping Doctor of Gympie". "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. "Carl was a mate of mine of some 16 years" standing", he wrote.
Foreign 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.
