Originally he trained as an architect, but later took up drawing, writing and acting,[1] settling eventually in Sydney and later in the New South Wales town of Camden.

In the 1920s, Australian-born composer John Gough set McCrae's poem "Song of the Rain" (from the collection Colombine) to music.

[3] McCrae wrote a fantasy play, The Ship of Heaven, which was produced by the Independent Theatre in 1933, for which Alfred Hill composed and conducted the music.

[1] Writing after his death in 1958, Mary Gilmore declared that he was Australia's "most outstanding poet", that his poetry "came diamond-like in its perfection of form".

[6] Judith Wright called him "a singer, not a thinker, [who] freed the notion of poetry from the portentousness of the Nationalist and radical schools".