The City Bushman is a poem by iconic Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n writer and poet Henry Lawson

Henry Lawson

Henry Lawson was an Australian writer and poet. Along with his contemporary Banjo Paterson, Lawson is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial period and is often called Australia's "greatest writer"...

. It was first published in The Bulletin

The Bulletin

The Bulletin was an Australian weekly magazine that was published in Sydney from 1880 until January 2008. It was influential in Australian culture and politics from about 1890 until World War I, the period when it was identified with the "Bulletin school" of Australian literature. Its influence...

magazine on 6 August 1892, under the title In Answer to "Banjo", and Otherwise. It was the fourth work in the Bulletin Debate

Bulletin Debate

thumb|250px|right|[[Henry Lawson]] with [[J.F. Archibald]], the co-founder of [[The Bulletin]]The "Bulletin Debate" was a famous dispute in The Bulletin magazine from 1892-93 between two of Australia's most iconic writers and poets: Henry Lawson and Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson.- Origin :At the...

, a series of poems by both Lawson and Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson

Banjo Paterson

Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson, OBE was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author. He wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the district around Binalong, New South Wales where he spent much of his childhood...

, and others, about the true nature of life in the Australian bush.


In The City Bushman, Lawson responds to Paterson's poem, In Defense of the Bush, quoting a number of phrases, and criticising each in turn.