2nd July 2023
Muddied Memories by George Shand
I doubt that the Weather Bureau would agree but I often think that the beginning of winter should be defined as the day the roped off sections of the course multiply. This would allow for the definition of the depths of winter to be the day carts are banned. Newcomers to West Gippsland are often surprised at the quagmire the course can become; they wouldn’t if they knew that the course was constructed on a semi-swamp. The early settlers weren’t going to let good agricultural land be wasted on a racetrack and then a golf course.
So, mud is part of our DNA. We don’t have to love it but we certainly have to live with it. So, what are the memories?
Well first some context. Phil Thomson’s father, Don, was a very good local cricketer and with two holes-in-one to his name, a more than competent golfer. He remembered playing golf in gumboots. OK so they would keep his feet dry but, from my childhood memories, not warm, and would certainly have made keeping your stance stable a little difficult. He would also have played in the days when, if the playing group saw the ball land on the fairway but then was lost forever, a free drop was allowed. This was totally against the rules of golf and we even had a visit from the rules people in Melbourne to confirm this but it was a practical answer to an intractable problem.
Now it might be useful to bookend this discussion by referencing two years. In 1967 Victoria started on the road to Natural Gas. Yes, we had manufactured gas before then. Why else did North Melbourne’s Arden Street home have the gasometer wing? Surely not so that the well fed ruckman, Mick Nolan, could be nick named the “Galloping Gasometer? Incidentally, I grew up in Oakleigh and let me tell you those storage units stank.
Anyway, all of this was to change when the decision was made to pipe natural gas from the Bass Strait oilfields to the energy-hungry Melburnians. Straight through our course! It wasn’t just that the course was almost closed for three months but that it happened during one of our wettest winters. One of our members broke an arm when she fell while attempting to cross a temporary bridge. Hughie Mapleson, our secretary of the time and author of the wonderful “The Dust Never Settles” which chronicles the time when our club was re-established after the war in 1955 to his death in 1971, had this to say: “The course was difficult to maintain, access to the Northern section was impossible and much of our employees’ time was taken up with arguments with (my emphasis) an ignorant crew of loafers who passed as pipeline technicians.” This was nothing to the contempt he felt for the Race Club who he described variously as, “spoilt kids”, “continually pin pricking” and taking over our fairways “with tape measures and little pegs and much verbal activity.”
Now let’s fast forward more than fifty years to the end of the Millennial Drought. With a twenty-seven hole golf course, we were reduced to playing just nine holes – twice a game! My enduring memory was the piece of carpet laid between the 5th and 13th tees, presumably so we didn’t get our feet too wet. Well, it didn’t work but we played on. Some of you are intimately acquainted with the dam between the 6th and the 7th but you might like to turn away: it shouldn’t be there. The Committee at the time initially approved the idea not only as water storage but as a means of lowering the water table. That damned swamp again. Then the Committee balked at the cost and said no but were stymied when they turned up one day to find that construction had already started. Next time you forget there is water on your right blame it on the then Committee.
The dam’s location is interesting. It was exactly where an original water course lay. Presumably, the water drained from the area near the club house across the 9th (more of this later) then the 6th (near the first of the big pine trees which some of you find attractive) and then the 15th which presumably explains the location of the dam at the 15th which I am told is very, very deep, before leaving our area through the 12th drain. Or the drain where the Betty and Des Nottage’s Jack Russell was stuck for nearly three days before greenkeeper, Johnny de Court rescued her. The run-off water then became some else’s problem.
Except it didn’t. The 12th was always just about the worst mud problem we had. Shane Dwyer will tell you about the instruction for players to carry a screwdriver as part of their essential equipment to more easily plant kikuya runners which might provide a good fairway surface but are a pain near greens – they do like to ignore their chosen boundaries. Problem solved; problem created.
And other hot, well, wet spots really? When we had 27 holes the 12th was an absolute beauty. The water simply ran down the hill despite the dam near the 3rd and settled on the fairway before eventually reaching a drain which eventually reached a creek which now feeds the wetlands on the right of the current 3rd. Abandon hope all who ventured here.
The 9th gets an honourable mention. My impression is that it is no longer the quagmire it once was. Ryan will know but if you ask him he might point out all of the inaccuracies this article contains and I wouldn’t want you to think that I don’t know what I am talking about.
Richard Snare was our first Chairman of the Board and it is fair to say that he doesn’t get a good press. He did get something right though when major drainage works were carried out on the 11th, 12th and 13th. It wasn’t the first time this was tried but this time it worked.
No doubt each one of you can add to these stories but importantly we should learn to embrace our “Muddy’ status which means learning to tuck our paths into our socks. Now we all have vivid memories of the perfect bunker shot or the delicate wedge that convinced us, momentarily, that we could actually play but great mud shots? Few and far between but in 2013 I wrote this.
Glenn Mallon hasn’t done anything to irritate us lately so you might be interested in this story. He drove the ball into the drain on the (then) 6th. We encouraged him to play the shot hoping he would fall over and give us a laugh. Instead, he hit the ball cleanly and avoided the mud and slush. Selfish bugger.
It got worse though. On the 10th (now 1st ) he drove the ball into the dam. This time the shot was even harder because the ball was below his feet. Undeterred, he blasted the ball out to where it came to rest on the green. The six-foot birdie putt was just a formality after that. And bragging rights of course.
Inspired? Probably not so let’s conclude with this. Mud might be bad; dry might not be so good either. Angus Macarthur played at gold fields Maldon when players picked up rocks during their round so that they eventually had an acceptable course. It’s all relative you see.
George Shand
