Daughter of Joseph Alfred Pope and Elizabeth (Harvey), Olive Pope was born and lived the first 21 years of her life in Broken Hill, New South Wales, where her father worked as a winding engine driver. She had one brother, and a large extended family of relations living in Broken Hill. Every Christmas the women folk and children went to the beach or to the hills for a holiday away from the heat.
Pope suffered with ill-health as a child. She hoped to be a teacher, but her poor eyeseight made this impossible. Her parents encouraged her music and commercial studies, but she was expected to stay at home. When she was 21 the family (Pope, her parents, brother, grandmother and several uncles and aunts) moved to 'the Fourth Creek near Montecute Road' where they became poultry farmers and market gardeners. Pope did some work for Cowell Brothers' office at Norwood, but 18 months later returned to help at home until her mother's death in 1922 and from then on ran the home for her father.
The property was sold in 1935 and after that Pope rented a succession of big houses at Glenelg, where she let out rooms. She also did some office work, both in Adelaide, and after the death of her father in 1944, in Melbourne and in Sydney. She bought a house at Como, where she lived with her friend Jessie until Jessie married, and then she moved back to Adelaide and took a house at Magill. Here Pope took in boarders and taught music.
Pope described herself as 'a hoarder', and in later years she published, under the name 'Olivia', a number of books compiled from diaries and exercise books she had kept over the years since she was a young woman, with diary entries, letters and quotations from books she read. These publications include Memories (quotations and essay, with some autobiographical material, 1978) and Olivia and Friends (1982). At the age of 93 Pope had an operation on her eyes which restored her failing sight.
