Clark was born in Sydney in 1915,[REF] the son of the Revd Charles Clark, an English-born Anglican priest from a working-class background (he was the son of a London carpenter), and Catherine Hope, who came from an old Australian establishment family.
Clark's happiest memories of his youth were of the years 1922-24, when his father was the vicar of Phillip Island, south-east of Melbourne, where he acquired the love of fishing and of cricket, which he retained for the rest of his life.