It was first published in The Bulletin magazine on 8 October 1892 in reply to fellow poet Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson's poem, In Answer to Various Bards.

[1] In Up The Country, Lawson had criticised "The City Bushman" such as Banjo Paterson who tended to romanticise bush life.

[3] This exchange sparked what is known as the Bulletin Debate, mainly between Paterson and Lawson, but also including Edward Dyson and Francis Kenna.

This poem ended the first phase of the debate because, as Paterson observed in 1939, the poets "...ran out of material."

The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature said of the poem that it "...widened the discussion to include the role of literature in reforming the total Australian society..."[4]