Career
McRae was a Wahgunyah man of the Kwatkwat people, whose country stretched from south of the Murray River to near the junction of the Goulburn and Murray rivers in Victoria. McRae recorded the establishment of pastoral settler society in his country while he was a labourer on pastoral stations in northern Victoria. He is believed to have been a stockman for Andrew Hume, of Brocklesby station at Corowa, New South Wales, between 1849 and 1857 and in around 1865 was at David Reid"s station on the Upper Murray" and previously at Barnawartha where McRae"s first drawings were collected between 1861 and 1864 by sculptor Theresa Walker (Mrs GH Poole) under the name "Tommy Barnes", McRay having possibly adopted an employer"s name, Wodonga pastoralist David Barnes.
He also went by the names of Yackaduna and Warraeuea.
Producing and selling books of drawings, several of them were purchased from McRae by travellers. These contained illustrations of traditional Aboriginal life, including ceremonies, hunting and fishing, with individuals and animals predominantly silhouetted in landscapes of sparse trees and earth.
The subjects included squatters and Chinese and William Buckley, who had lived for 30 years with the Wathaurung. The artist was uncredited in the work, but the correct attribution was discovered when later investigation of Language"s papers found an inscription with the original drawings.
In the 1860s McRae settled on the shores of Lake Moodemere at Wahgunyah, Victoria where Roderick Kilborn, a Canadian vigneron and telegraph-master, became a patron and protector for the artist in the early 1880s.
Between 1890 and 1897, McRae"s children were taken from him sent to reserves under Victorian government regulations, despite efforts by Kilborn to prevent this. McRae died on 15 October 1901 and was buried in the Carlyle cemetery at Wahgunyah. His drawings are held by the National Museum of Australia the National Gallery of Australia, National Library of Australia Canberra, the State library Victoria, New South Wales Library and Melbourne Museum.