‘Mrs Mac’ (Isabella Bridget McPherson)

‘I like people, I like serving them’ was Mrs Mac’s business credo.

And serve the Pambula community and visitors to Pambula she did – for almost 50 years, and up until she had turned 102 years old.

Isabella Bridget Casey was born in New Zealand in 1888. She left school at age 14 to take up a millinery apprenticeship.

At age 19 she moved to Sydney, then returned to New Zealand, then returned to Sydney when ‘the cold and rain drove me back to Australia’, to then be employed as a buyer by David Jones and Grace Bros. Then, for 14 years, she ran a baby wear shop.

In 1926 Bridget married her cousin, John Malcom McPherson, a farmer at Greig’s Flat to the south of Pambula. A severe seven-year drought, that impacted their income from farming, prompted her to open her first shop in Pambula in 1941.

John died four years later, and for a time Bridget was running two farms, the Greig’s Flat Post Office and her Pambula store.

‘Mrs Mac’, as she was known, was an astute, clever businesswoman. Her ‘Emporium’ – fashion and other clothing at the entrance to the store, haberdashery at the back – became a town landmark and a town institution. And behind the shop she had several flats that were rented out.

She provided ‘one-stop shopping’ for clothing – work clothes, school uniforms, underwear, ‘the whole outfit, from shoes to hats’ that always reflected the latest in fashion. And she particularly enjoyed dressing individual customers, aiming to ‘sell them something that makes them look better than they are’ – because, as she observed, ‘that’s the art of salesmanship!’

Mrs Mac was also very community-minded. She would not mark up the price of old stock when identical new stock arrived at a higher price (so customers would regularly rummage through piles of clothes to ensure they paid lower prices), she would support those who were poor or experiencing hard times, including holding lay-bys for up to two years. And she only employed locals to work in the Emporium including, on Saturdays, local schoolgirls – who she would send home to change whenever she felt their dresses were inappropriate for her retail environment!

Mrs Mac’s own ‘uniform’ was a simple dress and cardigan.

Mrs Mac also loved to talk. Although she had no time for organised religion, she was well-known for frequently quoting the scriptures.

Unsurprisingly, Mrs Mac was at work at the Emporium on her 100th birthday. The local newspaper, though, did not let the occasion pass unnoticed, by including a multi-page insert about her in that week’s edition.

Mrs Mac finally retired at age 102, by which time she was claiming to be Australia’s oldest working taxpayer.

Bridget McPherson died in 1992. Her final act was to bequeath her Emporium to Imlay House, the local nursing home.