From "The Drover's Wife" by Henry Lawson, please describe the hard life of the drover's wife.

A reader shouldn't struggle to find evidence of how the mother in the story has some serious hardships to overcome in her life.  Lawson does a great job of showing readers a balance of emotional and physical things that the mother struggles with.  
The mother in the story lives in the Australian Outback.  That alone is one of the toughest environments on the planet, and readers are told early on in the story that the environment has taken its toll on the mother.  In section 1 of the story, readers are told that the children look "ragged" and "dried-up."  We are also told that the drover's wife looks "gaunt."  Those descriptions do not point toward characters having an easy life.  
Lawson immediately follows up his unflinching description of the mother and her children with an immediate and deadly hardship.  A snake has entered the house and is threatening the kids.  She immediately grabs her children and takes them outside.  Unfortunately, the Australian Outback doesn't allow her to find safety outside for long.  A thunderstorm is quickly approaching, and the mother is forced to take the children back into the house.  She knows full well that the snake is still there.  

 It is near sunset, and a thunderstorm is coming. The children must be brought inside. She will not take them into the house, for she knows the snake is there, and may at any moment come up through a crack in the rough slab floor.

Her solution is to occupy the kitchen, and her family will sleep on the table.  She will remain awake to stand guard.  As the drover's wife sits there, she contemplates other hardships that she has had to deal with in the past.  
On one occasion, a child of hers died while her husband was away, and she had to carry the corpse the 19 miles to town for help.  On another occasion, she had to fight off a flood while her husband was away again.  Her efforts failed as well.  

She thinks how she fought a flood during her husband's absence. She stood for hours in the drenching downpour, and dug an overflow gutter to save the dam across the creek. But she could not save it. 

On another occasion, she had to fight off a fire that threatened her home. She treated pleuro-pneumonia in her cattle, and despite her efforts, two of them still died.  She shot and killed a "mad bullock that besieged the house for a day."  She did this with bullets that she made. 
What's incredible is that the drover's wife goes through all of these hardships alone.  Her husband is never there.  His job takes him away from the house for months at a time.  When this story begins, he has already been gone for 6 months, and the longest he has been away is 18 months.  It's a physical hardship to maintain the house, the kids, and herself; however, it's an emotional hardship to have to deal with the months of loneliness that she must endure.  

But this bushwoman is used to the loneliness of it. As a girl-wife she hated it, but now she would feel strange away from it.