Charmian Clift

Charmian Clift - legendary Australian writer and newspaper columnist - was born in Kiama in 1923 and grew up in one of the quarry workers' cottages at the end of Hothersall Street (then the Princes Highway) at the southern end of Bombo Beach. She spent her childhood playing around the rock platforms and creek that opens up onto Bombo Beach.Her father was a supervisor at the Bombo Headland Quarry.

 Charmian went on to become an internationally recognised writer, and literary collaborator and wife of author George Johnston, much of her work was influenced by her childhood and teenage years in Kiama.

Charmian was a talented student at the Kiama Public School during the late 1920s / early 1930s, and this poem was written by her when she would have been in Year 2 or 3 at school (8 years old). It captures the blowhole beautifully; don't you think?

Kiama's Blowhole
by Charmian Clift

Forever in storm or sunshine,
Changing from rage to play,
Kiama's wonderful Blowhole
Sends up a fountain of spray.

Whenever a storm is raging,
And the sea is dull and grey,
The water spouts up in a torrent
And moans as it sinks away.

But when the sun is shining,
And the waves rush through and play,
Rainbows sprinkled with diamonds
Gleam in the falling spray.

Charmian in 1939, age 16, outside her home in Hothersal Street.

'North Kiama'. The row of cottages to the right of the bridge are the Quarry workers cottages. The Clifts rented the first house closest to the bridge and creek from 1916 until 1937. Photo c.1910.

Charmian's poem was published in the Kiama Independent in 1933

Charmian and her sister Margaret enlisted in the Australian Women's Army Service (AWAS) in 1943, and Charmian was quickly promoted to Lieutenant. Charmian and Margaret's names are on the Kiama Memorial Arch.