After school he attempted to make a living from freelance writing but also pursued work as a "wool-scourer, furniture-dealer, grape-picker, and as a salesman of insurance and real estate".

[2] Historian David Bird has written that "Ian Mudie proved the most strident champion of the cultural line taken by Australia First and the Jindies, although he was not a member of either group at the outbreak of the war."

In this period, P. R. Stephensen described Mudie's work as containing a "deep urge towards the elemental spirit of our own land, its courageous, fundamental Australianism".

[3] He was a friend of Miles Franklin and Colin Thiele,[1] and attracted favourable criticism from Xavier Herbert.

This was an example from which they could learn, not by imitation, but by coming to understand and accept the conditions which the environment imposes on them.After the Second World War Mudie was the recipient of a fellowship from the Commonwealth Literary Fund to conduct research into the paddlesteamers of the Murray-Darling river system and in 1961 published the book Riverboats.