The novel is a celebration of community and people's search for connection with family, the past, and the environment in which they live.[4] The novel also explores several Australian cultural myths, including the idealisation of the Aussie battler, the heroic figure of the ANZAC, rural and suburban identity, and the idea of Australia as "the lucky country".[5] Peter Garrett also noted the importance of landscapes in the book: "he writes about the physicality of our landscapes and whether it's sort of, you know, railway cuttings, or bits of the desert, or the coast, or the estuaries where they go fishing occasionally, and he casts that landscape across the top of the lives that people are leading and their emotional landscapes are sort of contrasting against the landscapes of things they're doing at different times".[6]
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