What is a "key idea" to focus on throughout an analytical essay on The Drover's Wife by Henry Lawson, including key quotes and literary features employed by Lawson to help foster this key idea?

This short story by Henry Lawson is ostensibly about a single incident in the life of a bushwoman, the wife of a drover, who notices that a snake has burrowed under her house; she now must kill the snake before it hurts her children. As the story goes on, however, it becomes clear that the real focus of the story is upon the woman's self-reliance and the near total absence of her husband, who returns only infrequently and upon whom she seemingly depends only for money. Only the dog, Alligator—who, notably, is named, though the drover is not—seems to offer her any support, sitting awake with her while they guard the children, his many scars reflective of the protection he has offered her in the past.
A "key idea," then, might be the self-reliance of the woman and the sheer extent of what she accomplishes, assisted only by Alligator, with whom she communicates effectively; when he sees the snake, a "thrill" runs through his body, and because of their long association, the woman "knows what this means"—he has seen the snake. Between the two of them, they kill the snake: Alligator "pulls" it from its hiding place, whereupon he "shakes the snake as though he felt the original curse in common with mankind." The woman then "lifts the mangled reptile on the point of her stick" and "lays her hand on the dog's head," symbolic of the relationship between the two—together, they have killed the snake and righted the situation.
The greater part of the story, in truth, focuses upon the many acts the woman has been forced to perform on her own, or with Alligator, in defense of her children. The author uses parallelism and repetition to enumerate the many feats the woman has achieved. The reassuring presence of Alligator allows the segue into the memories of what the woman has done: "she has not heard from her husband for six months," and yet she "is used to being alone."
We are told that the woman "rode nineteen miles for assistance" once, carrying a dead child of hers; "she fought a bush fire once while her husband was away." She "fought a flood during her husband's absence." She "fought the pleuro-pneumonia," "fought a mad bulllock," "made bullets," "fights the crows and eagles that have designs on her chickens." The examples go on and on: the woman is beset continually by challenges, and yet she is "contented with her lot," protected only by her stalwart dog.
At the end of the story, one of the children declares that he "won't never go drovin'," a declaration of support for his mother and, perhaps, acknowledgement that the wife of a drover is, effectively, forced to survive alone.