Born in England in 1896, she worked as part of the Women’s Land Army during World War 1. She migrated to Australia in 1924 and won awards for her pottery in Adelaide, some of which was exhibited in Birk’s Department Store.
She quickly mastered the art of sculpting Australian animals, including kookaburras, wallabies, kangaroos and magpies; it was said that “soft subtlety of tone was captured in Pam’s clay modellings and there were fine specimens in both fields of art.” It was also stated that “Miss Green has a fine sense of colour as well as of design”.
In 1931 she moved to Sydney and joined the United Associations of Women, a group active in political movements. One of their objectives was to help unemployed single women settle on the land and learn farming.
Jessie Street of the UAW headed the meetings with the Department of Lands and eventually the State Government reluctantly agreed, nominating the Doonside Estate.
There were many who openly stated that women could not learn to farm the land, and the experiment would fail. The women were to pay a nominal rent of one shilling per month, with the right to later purchase.
It was a very hard life for Pam and the sixteen women who took up allotments off Bungarribee Road. They had to live in tents or build their own shelters, and trudge to Blacktown for supplies as there was no transport and use a community shower. Water had to be carried by hand to each plot from a nearby creek.
Safety at night was another issue, and many of the women slept with a mattock beside them. One newspaper wrote that the women needed a radio to brighten their lives at night and keep in touch with the world.
Sometimes a passing settler would give them a lift into Blacktown to obtain food supplies, or a neighbouring farmer would donate the use of his plough.
Camp with daughter
An elderly woman was in camp with her daughter, waiting for her ten-year-old son to join them, hoping that someone would build a room for him alongside her tent. During the heat of the day, they could only shelter in their tents or under trees.
The land leased and later purchased by Pam was Lot Q, RMB 1022, later known as Lots 286 and 287 Bungarribee Road. According to her will, by the time of her death she owned it outright. It comprised just over three acres, with a 198 foot (60 metres) frontage to Bungarribee Road.
While other women eventually gave up, Pam persisted. Not only did she establish her farm and eventually a rough house, but a small workshop in which to carry out her pottery.
During World War II Pam joined the local Women’s Land Army, working on a chicken farm. Once the war was over she worked at a weaving mill at Riverstone and later did domestic work at a local school, and returned to her first passion, pottery.
But the women’s group settlement did not last, and one by one the lots were abandoned and returned to scrub. But not so Pam Green. In 1954 she took a pottery course at Westmead College to improve her techniques and took part in classes at East Sydney Technical College. She also joined Parramatta Art Society.
In later life, she painted a self portrait, which is today in the collection of Blacktown Arts and Crafts Group in Blacktown Showground. She was a member of a church choir, and together with another chorister, Patricia Parker, they decided to form a Players Group and Musical Society.
The Garribee Art Group was formed in October 1969, when she was 73, due to Pam’s efforts to encourage local Blacktown people to enjoy arts and crafts.
She commenced classes for interested adults and children, using her workshop on her property for classes and exhibitions. The group continued for a short time following her death, but eventually had to quit the site and disband.
Estate left to friends
On 4th June 1972, aged 76 years, Pamela Thayer Green passed away at Blacktown Nursing Home. She never married and a friend arranged her funeral and internment in the Church of England Cemetery at Prospect.
Her headstone states “In Loving Memory of A Dear Friend Pamela T Green Died 5.6.1972”.
Pam’s estate was left to two close friends. Her land was eventually resumed by the Housing Commission in 1987 and then further subdivided by Landcom.
Blacktown Advocate reported in 1983 that her “historic home crumbles as Council waits …”
There were efforts to have Council acquire the house and workshop for a community centre and craft workshops, and as “the only surviving example of a live-in, make-shift accommodation more significant because it was built by a woman.”
Sadly, this did not occur, and the house and workshop were demolished. Pam is remembered today with a street named after her on what was part of her property.
[Postscript: Pam did not found Blacktown Arts and Crafts Group, as some believe, which was established some years after her death, nor did she leave her estate to Blacktown City Council.]
