My wife Nay (a pseudonym adopted for this blog) descends from early settlers to Wooroloo, a small attractive town in the Jarrah forests of the Darling Scarp east of Perth, Western Australia. Nay's ancestors had worked orchards, sheep and other ventures from various properties in the area since the late 1800's and her paternal grandparents maintained a ten acre property of paddocks and park-cleared land where Nay spent many school holidays.
Nay's grandmother passed away too young with cancer in the early 1990's and her husband took his final rest in 2006, leaving the property to their two sons who eventually put the property to sale. While it sat on the market over the next few years we continued to meet Nay's father and stepmother at the property for long cups of tea and picnic lunches and to share memories and laughter. My children, both too young to remember their maternal great-grandparents, made their own fond memories of the property as they spent the days exploring, imagining, getting dirty and exhausted.
The prospect of losing the family property and a foothold in Wooroloo played on our minds and we explored every option for buying the property, which remained financially out of reach. The property was sold in 2010 to strangers.. That dream was over.
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