Corrigan and his mother were granted a travel permit and left mainland China ahead of his father aboard the SS Fausang,[1] which was captured in the Battle of Hong Kong on 8 December 1941, the same day as the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Corrigan and his mother subsequently spent four years in the Stanley Internment Camp during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong.

Corrigan left school in 1948 at the age of fifteen to work for a Unilever subsidiary where he was employed as a junior clerk in a freight subdivision.

[5] In the early years, Corrigan's freight forwarding and clearance companies specialised in shipping fashion, textiles and auxiliary machinery for clients such as Kolotex Pty Ltd, Hilton Pty Ltd and Mark Foys Ltd.[6] In 1970 it was reported in the press that Corrigan successfully imported the largest ever painting to Australia – American Dream, an 80 x 18 ft work by Brett Whiteley weighing 2.5 tons – for exhibition at Bonython Gallery.

In its first year the company achieved the top ranking for export freight forwarding by the IATA,[10] which stemmed from its logistics initiatives in the fresh fruit market.

[10] In 1993 Pace Express was acknowledged by the IATA as being the first Australian agent to receive a settlement of more than $2 million for freight forwarding billing in a single month.

In 2012 he acquired Better Read Than Dead, a large independent bookstore in Sydney's vibrant multi-cultural neighbourhood of Newtown,[20] for which he is co-director.

Described as "the most comprehensive collection of bookplates by Australian artists ever amassed",[27] The Pat Corrigan Collection of Australian Artists' Bookplates, comprising five thousand plates and related objects, including original artwork, transitional states of the plate and original blocks, was donated to the Art Gallery of New South Wales[28] in 1995, valued at $750,000.

His most notable donation was the collection of letters and manuscripts by the artist Norman Lindsay and his family, which was valued in the late 1990s at well over $1 million.

Corrigan was awarded the Member of the Order of Australia medal in the 2000 Queen's Birthday Honours List (conferred 12 June 2000) for "service to the visual arts, particularly as a philanthropist to regional galleries and through a grant scheme for artists".