[Available late November 2023]

Tommy Ryan, the shearer, is the only Member of the Queensland Parliament without a known date or place of death. His brief, but significant, political career saw him play a major part in the Shearers’ War and the formation of Australia’s oldest political party – the Australian Labor Party.

Ryan left the parliament with the comment, ‘The friends were too warm, whisky too strong, and the cushions too soft.’ He returned to the billabongs, where at some time after 1917 he disappeared. Like many other itinerant workers, Tommy Ryan’s remains lay unfound on the vast Mitchell grass plains he loved.

Researched and written by Pat Comben.

Pat was Queensland’s Minister for Education and Minister for Environment in the 1990s.

 Pat Comben's study of the first T.J. Ryan now gives due and timely recognition to a 'hero' in Queensland's political history. We need to remember and appreciate the serious industrial, political and social struggles of the workers of the 1880s and 1890s.

W. Ross Johnston (former Head of Department of History, University of Queensland)

 Pat Comben's small book on Queensland's first T.J. Ryan - a knockabout shearer - is an historical gem.

Ross Fitzgerald (Emeritus Professor of History & Politics, Griffith University)

ISBN: 978-0-6457195-0-5