the colony. In the late 1880s, Queensland was a vast, decentralised colony where predominantly white, male workers were clustered in regional areas around the rural extractive industries – the mines and the great shearing sheds. Queensland had no industrial base to speak of, even in the south east corner. Workers had been lured to Queensland, mainly from Britain, with the promise of being self-made men. The percentage of successful immigrants to become wealthy pastoralists, mining magnates or industrialists was very small – by 1887 most immigrant workers in the mining industries were wage-labourers for a mere 30 mining companies. The wool industry was similarly consolidated. In New South Wales there were 3,000 shearing sheds. In the whole of Queensland there were only 150. The forcing together of large numbers of bitter, disillusioned men encouraged working-class mateship, heavy drinking and a spectacular growth of trade unionism in the colony. Class activism was further fuelled by several firebrand journalists of the day, notably William Lane who worked on the Brisbane Courier and the Brisbane Observer before starting the Boomerang in 1887. The racy, iconoclastic Boomerang took the colony by storm, propagating socialist and republican ideas. Henry Lawson wrote under the name Joe Swallow. This was a period of rapid growth and saw the establishment of several major unions. The Queensland Shearers Union was formed in January 1887 to help combat pastoralists' attempts to reduce the shearing rate. By August 1889 it had close to three thousand members. The Amalgamated Shearers' Union of Australasia was formed in 1887, mostly representing workers in southern states, eventually in 1894 merging with other rural-based unions to form the Australian Workers' Union. The Queensland Labourers' Union was established at Saltern Creek in 1888 as the Central Queensland Labourers' Union, then in 1892 amalgamated with the Queensland Shearers' Union to form the Amalgamated Workers Union of Queensland. The Queensland Teachers Union was established in 1889. The Amalgamated Workers Union merged with the Australian Workers Union in 1904. The Fifth Intercolonial Trade Union Congress in Brisbane in 1889 accepted the proposal to form the Australian Labour Federation, with the inaugural meeting on 11 June 1889. The QCU disbanded, transferring its roles and responsibilities to the new peak body. For all intents and purposes, this was the QCU continuing under another name. The Australian Labour Federation was an attempt to create an Australia-wide peak body, but after failing to attract