Two months before winning his fifth British Open in 1965, Peter Thomson warmed up on fairways that, when he'd won his fourth title seven years earlier, were a dense bush of eucalypts, ti-tree and ferns in the Victoria Valley at the foot of Mount Abrupt. A gallery of about 600 looked on, beaming with pride at what a committed community could create.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Putting on sand scrapes in the Grampians National Park has its own peculiar challenges, but didn't throw Thomson's short game out of kilter when he took on Royal Birkdale's tough greens, nestled among the dunes at the fringe of the Irish Sea. In fact, Thomson enjoyed his day at Dunkeld so much he was back a few years later, headlining a invitational event with a purse of $400.
"If you mentioned Peter Thomson at that time, people would travel miles to go see him, he was so famous," says Iris Dark, whose name appears on the club champion's honour board a staggering 30 times. "He still is famous, of course."
And treasured, such that a crowd will again congregate at the club on Sunday when Thomson, now 85 and fresh off a plane from India, retraces his steps to celebrate the Grampians Golf Club's 50th anniversary. The locals will be there to salute him, and also to give themselves a deserved pat on the back for creating a place that embodies country spirit.
Dark remembers when people drove the old road to Halls Gap, gazed across the valley through the gums to the dots of sheep grazing on the farmland beyond, and would muse, "That'd be a great place for a golf club over there." It was "sort of a, 'ha, ha' thing at the start", but after a meeting in the Dunkeld hall, things got serious.
Iris Field, who has just written a book titled 50 Years of Grampians Golf, says the people "had a form of dedication and energy that I don't think you'd have now if someone came up with the idea". The work was entirely voluntary, farmers rolling through the valley with tractors, graders and trucks to clear the bush, women on foot slashing ferns to find the ground, gathering branches and bracken, leaving bonfires in their wake.
"Even people who didn't play golf, community members and friends, they took their machinery down and went to work," Field says. "It was a great communal exercise."
What they created exemplifies the lure of golf, that even if you can't hit a fairway or make a putt, at least you can look around and think life ain't half bad. Dark thinks the climb up the second feels more like you're actually scaling the mountain itself every week, and nominates the fourth - a downhill par five with Mount Abrupt at your back - as her favourite. Thomson has designed more than 100 courses worldwide, but the Grampians GC has a natural beauty to rival them.
The locals still do all the work, mowing and watering and cleaning the scrapes that stamp the course's simplicity. Dunkeld local Allan Myers QC and rich lister, favoured replacing them with greens but Dark says the local kangaroos took a liking to the grass when a trial green was installed.
"We put up a small fence but they just hopped over that. It went higher and higher and was eventually like a trampoline cage. You would have had to open a gate to get in, but I don't know how you got your ball onto the green, that was a problem. So that was abandoned."
Former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser's family pile was Nareen station, near Hamilton, and wife Tammy hails from the region, too. In October 1976, Fraser hosted controversial Singapore prime minister Lee Kuan Yew and brought him across for a game of golf.
Dark remembers little fanfare, people bringing plates of afternoon tea, as you do. Field's research hints at an edgier afternoon; when the club president tapped Lee on the shoulder to point out an eagle flying overhead, security descended on the fairway. "The game of golf was kept fairly quiet, not many knew it was happening," Field says.
A fifth-generation Grampians woman, she suggested calling her book "Replace Your Divots", a nod to the meticulous policing of an early member, an instruction on the back of all fixture booklets, and because that's all she remembers a teacher saying on the only two occasions she has played. "Someone tried to coach me, but really I could only gouge holes in the ground."
Dark's trophy cabinet betrays a far greater aptitude, but despite its links with the good and great, this is a place that prides inclusion over excellence. In the beginning, when the families of soldier settlers paid debentures to get their club off the ground, there were almost 200 members. Today more than 100 still revel in their legacy.
"There's a feel about the place," Field says. "It's a place of belonging for people."
