Kiama Region

Distinguished and Famous people from Kiama Region

📚 Charmian Clift

Kiama-born writer Charmian Clift was putting the town into words early: at eight, she wrote a poem about its blowhole. The coastal landscape remained an influence after she left, including in Walk to the Paradise Gardens and the unfinished childhood novel The End of the Morning, published in 2024. Living overseas widened her literary world, while her newspaper essays after returning to Australia in 1964 challenged assumptions about women, migration and social justice. Kiama was both her childhood home and a recurring imaginative landscape, not merely a convenient birthplace in a literary biography.

🎭 Orry-Kelly

Costume designer Orry-Kelly was born Orry George Kelly in Kiama and attended its public school. The son of a tailor, he moved towards theatre rather than the banking career initially intended for him. Hollywood eventually provided a rather larger wardrobe: he worked on more than 300 films and won three Academy Awards, including for Les Girls and Some Like It Hot. With no formal design training, he built his career through practical work in art, sets and costume. His international success began a long way from the film studios, with a Kiama childhood and family exposure to performance.