Simple Pleasures

Little Oakey

My grandfather, Michael John Pope, was a pioneer farmer in outback New South Wales, Australia. He built his small, four-room home, Little Oakey, from the creek-stones of the area. Behind the house was a wattle and daub (clay) kitchen and cellar. In that little home with his wife, Mary Jane, he raised five children in what would be considered, by today’s standards, primitive isolation. Such was life in the outback. It was and, essentially, still is harsh, relentless, and intensely beautiful. It becomes part of the soul and is embedded into one’s psyche as primal home.