He is reported at Rockhampton as early as 1864, where he joined the literary staff of A. L. Bourcicault's Northern Argus; by August 1865 he was advertising himself as an accountant and commission agent at Port Denison (Bowen) under the name Edgar J.
He subsequently worked for several years as an 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.
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.
[9][10] Still editor and manager of the Figaro, Byrne died at St Helen's Hospital, Brisbane, on 16 November 1906, a victim of acute neuralgia.