Outback Life
Outback life is difficult, physically hard and mentally testing. The outback is the largely un-developed area of Australia, the wilderness, where there are people, but not communities as we know them. The outback of Lawson's short stories is a tough and rugged place where people have little time for emotions or niceties. The work is hard and physical, and there seems to be little money or luxury. It is also a place of isolation - it can be miles and miles before another person is encountered. The people of the outback seem to mirror their surroundings in terms of their personalities and are no-frills, hard working folk who seem to be more able to relate to their natural surroundings than to the people they may come across in them.
Loneliness and Isolation
Lawson's stories seem to suggest that isolation and loneliness are not the same thing, and that just because someone's life or situation might be isolated doesn't mean they are necessarily lonely. For example, the wife in The Drover's Wife is isolated and her husband is away from home most of the time, but she has no time to be lonely. She likes the company of her children and she copes with the isolation of their home by working hard and raising her family.
Similarly, the eccentric old man in The Bush Undertaker has his dog as his family. Their home is very isolated, but he is not lonely. His constant companion keeps him sane and focused and they are each other's family. The outback people seem to be used to their isolation but generally speaking, seem not to suffer from any kind of loneliness because of it - in fact, they seem to be drawn to the outback because of its isolation.
Family
The stories tend to revolve around families that are untraditional, and unrelated biologically. The old man and his dog are undoubtedly family and have the same kind of routine and rhythm to their life that a family would have. The Union Buries Its Dead also shows a picture of a family that is created based on the membership of the union. They consider the man who has died "family" even though they do not know him and have no idea who he is as a person. They just know that he was a "brother" by virtue of union membership and therefore treat him as family.
Even the families who present a more familiar picture of what family looks like are anything but the traditional family - The Drover's Wife shows us a family that is unusual for its time in that the wife is more than capable of raising the family and taking care of the home, and is charged with the task of doing so whilst her husband is away. She is a single parent whilst married. The other "traditional" looking family in the collection of stories is different in that they are miserable; the wife is lazy and neurotic and the man comes home from work to look after their children before going back to work again. He is miserable and has lost hope, which is a different image of what a family is supposed to be.
