SPANSWICKS' PADDOCK
In 1904 Carnegie Clarke - talented golf professional, instructor,
club maker, golf course architect and co-founder of the Australian
Professional Golfers Association - designed a nine-hole course at
Spanswicks' Paddock on the eastern banks of the Georges River at
Liverpool, Australia's fourth oldest settlement with a population of
4000. The greens were protected from the roaming cattle by wire fences
erected around their perimeter. Play was as
the ball lay, with relief only being attained if the ball became lodged
in a rabbit warren or cattle dung.
The players, seen by the general working-class public as the
garishly dressed idle
rich belting a small ball around a cow paddock, used
wooden clubs and the so-called gutta-percha balls, selling for about twelve shillings a dozen. The club's
first president was Dr. Beattie, a superintendent for the Liverpool
State Hospital.
Apart from the town's local doctors,
initial interest in the sport
was almost non-existent, but it was a beginning. Golf had been
established in the Liverpool area, much to the delight of the few who
were keenly interested.
This handful of enthusiasts kept the club going until
it collapsed with the arrival of the First World
War. Many members left to serve their country in Europe and the first Liverpool Golf Club came to an end.
WOODLANDS
It wasn't until the late 1920's that a few stalwarts revived the game
in the town on a make-shift course at Woodlands, just off Copeland
Street, in an area known as Mrs. Bull's Paddock. Unfortunately however, this course only
survived for a few years.
COLLINGWOOD
In 1931 Liverpool gained another course and another club, with a
foundation membership of twenty enthusiasts. Francis A. Crowe, a motor
engineer from Waverley, although not an experienced golfer, saw the need
for a golf facility west of Sydney with interest in the game building
enormously after the First World War. After studying a number of
possible sites with his wife Alice, an historic site was chosen on the
southern side of the city bordering the Hume Highway - the Collingwood
estate. The oldest building in Liverpool, Captain Bunker's cottage,
eventually became part of the clubhouse. 
Mr. Crowe and his family moved to Collingwood and he hired Tommy
Howard, the father of Al Howard (a well known professional golfer and
course architect) to design the course. With the opening of the course
to the public on Bank Holiday in 1931, a decision was quickly made to
form a golf club. Crowe and one of the city's general practitioners, Dr.
R.A. Lovejoy, called the Club's inaugural meeting. Dr. Lovejoy was
elected as the first president and the club officially began with twenty
members.
The names of many well known Liverpool families were to be found
among the foundation members including Marsden, Buckland, Clink, Wych,
Hamer, Prince, Cornes, Fitzpatrick, Kershler and Webb. Women were
admitted from the start, despite the misgivings of some of the men.
However, the effects of the depression, then the Second World War,
again disrupted the sport and marked the beginning of a lengthy
struggle to keep the club alive. It was not until 1951 that new
enthusiasm returned as the club became a limited
company, resulting in significant growth but financial difficulties.
Various lay-outs were tried through this period but the future of the
club remained uncertain.
The early sixties saw plans for
considerable expansion at Collingwood with work going ahead on different
layouts, the construction of a second full-length course, and advanced
planning for a new club house.
But then came some shattering
news - there was an expressway planned to go right through the middle of
the course, announced by the Department of Main Roads.
As the future looked grim, a
special board meeting, held in December 1964, approved a plan to sell
the course and begin looking for another site.
FROM COLLINGWOOD TO LANSVALE
After years of wrangling with the
legal and financial complications of rezoning the Collingwood site for
residential sale and searching for a suitable site for a new course,
the special sub-committee clearly favoured and settled on a dairy
property at Lansvale, in the municipality of Fairfield nearly 10Kms
closer to the city.
In early April 1966 the final
contracts for both properties were sealed by the club, but it was not
until May 1969 that the Government finally approved the rezoning of
Collingwood and both deals were clinched.
Work on the new course began in
1969, as the members and associates continued to play on a reduced
course at Collingwood, amidst the roaring distraction of nearby
bulldozers.
The
last competitive match was played at Collingwood on July 18th, 1971, and
was followed by an emotional and nostalgic function in the clubhouse.
Sadness and regret were more evident on that final night among the older
members, as memories of past times, of triumphs and defeats, good times
and bad were exchanged, as the last round of drinks were served at the
Collingwood Clubhouse.
The official opening
of the new course by His Excellency the Governor of New South Wales, Sir
Roden Cutler, amongst enormous excitement and pride, occurred on
December 4th, 1971.
Just as the old course at
Collingwood was linked closely with the early history of New South
Wales, so the new club continued this sense of history. The course is
less than 2 Km from the historic Lansdowne Bridge on the Hume Highway,
one of the oldest on the Australian mainland. The course is also partly
surrounded by Prospect Creek, and opposite the third fairway a fork in
the Georges River joins the creek. This is where Governor John Hunter,
the second governor of New South Wales, landed in 1798 after a voyage up
the Georges River from Botany Bay, naming the area Bankstown.
The task of transforming the
dairy paddocks to a championship course was given to the firm of golf
course architects Golf and Recreation Planners Pty. Ltd. headed by
Robert Green. Among the striking features of the layout were seven
artificial lakes. Combined with the gently undulating land, and the tall
trees skirting Prospect Creek, the course had immediate aesthetic appeal
with its character and beauty offsetting the considerable despair felt by
golfers who strayed off the fairway.
The
attractive playing facilities were complemented by the construction of
the clubhouse, set on the highest portion of the course, commanding an
unobstructed view of the course from a large open sundeck on the first
floor, and a grandstand view of the 9th and 18th holes.
The first competitive game at
Lansvale was held on July 22nd, 1971 and the Liverpool Golf Club was on
its way to becoming one of Sydney's most beautiful and challenging
courses. Although the move to
Lansvale meant leaving the city which gave the club its
name, it transformed a small club with little prospect for expansion
into a major centre for the game in New South Wales.
