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About Me – Mike Pole
Palaeontologist, traveling the weyward path — trying to piece things together…
What are ya?!
For a long time, what I was probably had a simple answer – a New Zealander. My (younger) sister (an accomplished teacher and an author) and I were both born here. Our mother too, was born in New Zealand, of Irish, Scottish and Swedish background. But our father came from South Africa – of Irish, Scottish and English background. So on that side, I’m doubly removed. Here in New Zealand We have no connections at all with ‘the old countries’ – no relatives, and no stories. We have entirely cut ourselves loose. We aren’t indigenous New Zealanders, but we are are not Irish or Scottish either.
My mother was an only child, and her father died when she was ten. Her mother died when I was five, so, with everyone else a very long way away in South Africa, I did not grow up with grandparents or with a circle of aunts, uncles and ‘cousiebros’. That whole thing of getting a ‘leg up’ in life from family connections, or from ‘Dad’s/Mum’s business associates’ that so many other people have had, is completely alien to me. There were simply no such things. I sometimes wonder how different life may have been if both of my parents had been fourth generation New Zealanders.
