The sprightly 97-year-old said her mother was a friend of Grace Munro from Keera Station near Bingara, and had helped form the Warialda branch of the CWA. Mrs Munro is credited with founding the CWA in 1922.

“I was the only one that tried to follow in her footsteps. Nobody knows how wonderful the CWA is until you join it, and there’s a lot of people who don’t know the wonderful work the CWA still does,” Pat said.

“The last office I held was the vice-president of the North Coast. 

“I went to 15 conferences year after year and also helped the Royal Far West Children’s Home. I worked for Red Cross where I was awarded a gold medal for the work I did over the years.

“I just enjoyed helping everybody. I was in the Royal Far West for a lot of years and we got a lot of children well that might have died or been crippled.”

Pat said she joined the CWA as a teenager and had won numerous prizes in the shows with her needlework and handicraft.

“There was only one who ever beat me when I was in my teens, and she came from Beaconsfield in Melbourne.” she said.

Her three brothers and sister all went away to college, but when Pat’s turn came around she had different ideas. 

“I was the youngest of the family. I just said to mum and dad ‘Don’t you love me anymore?’” Pat said, and chuckled at the memory.

“Well that was right up my mother’s alley (she didn’t want me to go either). She was a lovely mother and my friend. 

“And dad just said, ‘Well I suppose it’s a poor family that can’t keep one girl at home.’ 

“I looked after my mother for 30 years. My brother said, ‘Mum wouldn’t like you to do that’, because I was engaged to be married to an Englishman, but I didn’t marry him.”

Pat did marry Patrick when she was 47-years-old, following the death of her mother.

“I didn’t go to school, really, with my husband, but I knew him,” Pat said.

“They owned a big property called ‘Forrest Hill’. I didn’t want to get married to anyone, I was too old, but he really persuaded me and ran after me. 

“He had lost his wife about four years before so I had four step-children to bring up.”

After their house burnt down the family moved to the coast, where Patrick had another house and Pat said she lived there for 40 years.

“I lived over there for 40 years,” she said.

“When my house burnt down I lost a lot of history of the CWA in my mother’s day.”