Mystery woman found: Pamela Pardoe a one-in-60-year find thanks to fate and family

Pamela Pardoe can barely remember posing for an unforgettable image that 60 years later ended up on the cover of The Weekend Australian Magazine.

Pamela Pardoe, 77, in her home town of Broadstairs, Kent, in southeastern Britain. Picture: Jamie Lorriman

What are the chances?

Believe me, by the end of this story you may well be asking the same question.

What are the chances that The Australian would have chosen to celebrate its 60th birthday by placing this particular photograph of a young and beautiful girl on the cover of our magazine?

The Australian’s photo that started it all.

We plucked the image out of the archives, to illustrate a story about how far the lives of women have come over the past 60 years.

We didn’t know who the girl was, or why she walking down the street. All we knew was that the image had been taken sometime in the 1960s.

We hoped she’d come forward, but really, what were the chances?

Turns out they were pretty good! The girl in the photo is Pamela Pardoe, who was then Pamela Tagg. She was just 16 years old – and married! – when the shot was taken, and she had only just moved to Australia.

“I came in 1963, and that photo was taken in 1964,” she says. “As for being married at 16, you could just do that then. Our parents approved. We wanted an adventure, so we came on a ship, as 10-pound Poms. And I’d been modelling in the UK so I went to see June Dally-Watkins, who signed me up.”

Pamela’s look was perfect for the ’60s: she was pint-sized, with big, baby-doll eyes, and she looked magnificent in a miniskirt.

Pamela as a model in the 1960s. Picture: Jamie Lorriman

“I got some fun jobs,” she says. For example, she was flown to Tahiti on a UTA airliner, to model German-made sportswear. She also found a great place to live: Harry Seidler’s Blues Point Towers. “I watched the Opera House being built, but I never saw it finished,” she says, because her stay in Australia ended up lasting just 18 months. “I was just too young to be married,” she says, “and then my father died, and I went home to be with my mother.”

Upon settling back in England, she divorced, before marrying her second (and current) husband, Kim Pardoe, with whom she has two children. Her youngest, Matthew Pardoe, grew up to have a daughter, Alex Pardoe, 22, who decided a little over a year ago she wanted to be like her Nana, and go travelling.

“Australia seemed like a good place to start,” she says, so she applied for a working visa, and flew in Sydney. “I saw the Opera House on my first day. Then I went across to Perth, and got a job in a cafe, to start making some money.”

Pamela in the ‘60s. Picture: Jamie Lorriman

On the morning of Saturday, July 6, she was busy setting out the morning newspapers for customers, when a copy of The Weekend Australian Magazine fell out.

“I looked at it, and saw the photograph and thought … wait, is that my Nana?” she says, laughing. “It can’t be my Nana, surely?”

Incredibly, it was.

“I’d seen lots of photos of her when she was model, and I just recognised her. So I texted her and said, ‘Nana, is this you?’.”

Pamela was completely shocked. “I just can’t believe it,” she says, and we can’t either. Because what are the chances?

“That photograph was taken 60 years ago,” says Pamela. “I was only in Australia for a short time, and Alex has only just arrived, but it just happened to be published while she was there, and she saw it, and she recognised me.”

While Pamela was not named in the archives, the information on the back of the photograph suggested it was first published in The Australian in 1967 to illustrate a story about a newly formed “International Society of Girl Watchers”.

Pamela and granddaughter Alex.

“But I know it was taken well before that,” says Pamela, because by 1967 she was already living back in England.

She can “vaguely remember being asked to dress up in the miniskirt, with the gloves and the garters, and being asked to look serious as I walked past the men. I can’t really remember why.”

Pamela says she was delighted to see the picture, which caused her to reflect on how far everyone has come.

“Alex’s life is so different from mine, because women can do what they want to do, and you don’t have to conform the way we had to conform,” she says. “You know, you have many more choices now. But it wasn’t like I didn’t have adventures. Going to Australia, being a model there, that was my adventure.”