When Charmian Clift returned to Australia with her husband George Johnston and their children, they left behind a creative Greek idyll and returned to suburban Sydney at a time of social upheaval.

Charmian threw herself into her weekly column on the women’s pages of a major newspaper and used it to question whether the country had changed as much as people claimed it had during their absence.  Seeing herself as both a migrant and returning expat gave her a unique outsider perspective. She soon developed a huge following for her opinions on everything from the war in Vietnam to the wearing of hats.

Her biographer Nadia Wheatley talks to Caroline Baum about how Charmian adjusted to suburbia and how she used her own lived experience and distinctive personal voice to connect with her readers.

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