Kogarah

Distinguished and Famous people from Kogarah

📚 Clive James

Clive James’s literary life began with a distinctly local education: Kogarah primary school, the public library and the streets around Margaret Street, where he grew up. He later recalled billycart races, swimming at Scarborough Park and visits to Parry’s Milk Bar in the world of Unreliable Memoirs. The library, then in the School of Arts, helped nourish his appetite for reading. Poetry, criticism, essays and television carried him far beyond Sydney, but the “Kid from Kogarah” remained part of his public identity.

🏅 Bruce Crampton

Golfer Bruce Crampton grew up in Arthur Street, in the area now known as Carlton, and attended Kogarah Boys’ High School. Nearby Beverley Park Golf Course supplied an early training ground, where professional Billy McWilliam encouraged the talented junior. Crampton turned professional in 1953, won the Australian Open in 1956 and subsequently built an international career that included 14 victories on the US PGA Tour. The local story therefore includes both schooling and the course where he developed his game. His later American success did not spring fully formed from a leaderboard; it had suburban fairways behind it.

📰 Tom Fitzgerald

Tom Fitzgerald attended Marist Brothers Boys’ School at Kogarah, completing his Intermediate certificate before further schooling and economics study. He became a financial journalist and founded Nation, an independent magazine that gave writers and critics room for sustained argument. Keeping it afloat required mortgages against the family home and later the use of part of his superannuation. His career also included economic advice to governments and the Boyer Lectures. Kogarah belongs to his education, before the newspaper columns and publishing risks. Behind the public commentator was a reader whose mother had given him Shakespeare even before secondary school.