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A Golfing Journey

Thursday 29 May 2025

Dear Nathan

When we last visited the story of Huntingdale’s journey through the 20th century the members at Eastern Golf Club had, in early 1938, voted pretty much unanimously to move to the Sandbelt. Within the space of two months the property at Oakleigh South, once occupied by the Melbourne Hunt Club, was purchased for around £9000, and arrangements were made, via debentures and a bank loan, to meet the costs of building the new course and a clubhouse, estimated to be £22,000

The War Years

On April 21, 1938 the Committee finally approved the purchase, at £75 per acre, of approximately 115 acres from Miss A.Creswick, this being the bulk of the land upon which the new course would be built.

Having secured both the money and the land for the new venture, the club was then faced with the enormous task of turning what was basically a large, scrubby paddock into a championship golf course.

The stables and farmhouse built by Melbourne Hunt Club, situated close to where today, our magnificent clubhouse overlooks the course.

The only person at Eastern with any knowledge of golf course design was course curator Sam Berriman, and he’d had no formal training. After negotiations with a local course design firm fell through, the committee accepted a tender of 100 guineas from British architect Charles 'Hugh' Alison.

Charles Hugh Alison, the English course architect who designed Huntingdale

Alison worked closely with famed course architect Harry Colt, and at times with the great Alister MacKenzie.

It was an inspired choice, for Alison was closely connected to several of what, even now, are considered among the world’s best course designers, including quite lengthy partnerships with Alister MacKenzie and Harry Colt, and later J.S.F. Morrison.

Alison was considered by many to be the first truly worldwide course architect, for as well as working extensively in Britain, he designed courses in Europe and in the United States. Also he was the first person to design and build a major golf course in Japan, Hirono Golf Club (1931), and in doing so laid down principles that guided Japanese golf course design throughout the 20th century.

Amazingly, Alison did not set foot in Australia. He completed his design entirely from detailed survey plans, notes and even terrain models, all provided by the club’s new committee.

Alison’s layout was, to say the least, challenging. Its overall length was 6500 metres, almost 1000 metres longer than the old course at Eastern, and was hundreds of metres longer than the most difficult courses of the day; Commonwealth, Kingston Heath, Metropolitan, Royal Melbourne and Victoria Golf Clubs.

The original course plan submitted by Hugh Alison.

Berriman was tasked with turning Alison’s design into the real thing. On more than a few occasions he was forced to improvise, in the main due to drainage issues. But while the finished course incorporated a lot of Berriman’s ideas, he and his team largely remained faithful to the design.

Sam Berriman (left), the course curator at Eastern GC responsible for transforming Alison's plan into a reality. He was appointed Huntingdale's first course superintendent.

Work began in the second half of 1938, and by the beginning of 1939 couch grass fairways began to emerge from the scrub. In the autumn the newly formed greens were sown with a mixture of brown top and fescue, and in late April club manager C.G.Kingsley, in a letter to Alison, wrote that visitors to the new course were lavish in their praise. One of those impressed was then Victorian Amateur Champion, Bill Edgar, who confirmed other impressions that the new course “will be the most difficult in Australia”.

It seemed things were progressing nicely, and they were, but all were aware of the dangerous situation developing in Europe as Nazi Germany continued to flex its muscle, and when, on September 3, war was declared, the men from Eastern GC sensed there was trouble ahead.

Still, to this point golf at the Eastern course continued to remain popular, so the committee felt it was in a position to start thinking about building the clubhouse on the new layout, and after considering three separate plans, settled on “Plan B”, which as it turned out was submitted by club member Bob Marsh.

His design formed the basis of a clubhouse that served its members well for almost 75 years, before making way for the magnificent structure we enjoy today.

The first unofficial golf shots were played on the new course early in 1940, as volunteer workers couldn’t resist having a hit on the fairways that had taken shape extremely well.

Looking south from the first tee in the early 1940's

Tentative plans were made to have the course up and running in April, 1941, but with Australia increasingly moving to a war-footing, such optimism began to wane.

Petrol rationing was introduced, and there was a severe shortage of tyres and spare parts, People with cars simply left them in the garage, and with fewer and fewer golfers making it to Eastern, the club soon found itself in dire financial circumstances.

Vin Russell, the man who originally set the ball rolling in the direction of the sandbelt, reported to the committee that the Bank of Australasia was prepared to issue the club an overdraft of £6000, provided it could offer a guarantee of £1500.

Eastern was in no position to raise that amount, but into the breach stepped Ernie Austin, a fine golfer and one of the club’s most knowledgeable administrators, with an offer to contribute the sum from his own pocket.

With the committee determined to be playing the new layout in the first half of 1941, the final few months before the move to Oakleigh were hectic. Work continued on building the clubhouse, while around the course working bees were busy planting trees, and directing attention to a myriad of small details.

Very early in the piece it was proposed the course at Oakleigh be given a new name, and several names were canvassed among the members, including ‘Huntingdale’ and ‘Eastleigh’. However nothing had been decided when, on May 17, 1941, following a luncheon in the partially built clubhouse, the first ball was struck and the new course was ‘officially’ opened.

Scenes from Huntingdale's opening day, May 17th, 1941

That evening, in the Melbourne Herald, golfing scribe Jack Dillon wrote the following.
“A new golf course in the famous Victorian sandbelt, which may soon be rated among Australia’s best championship layouts, was unofficially opened today when Eastern Golf Club moved from Doncaster to land adjoining that of Metropolitan Golf Club. The official opening will take place in August”.

And so Huntingdale Golf Club came into being. Well, sort of, because it wasn’t until four days later, at a special meeting held after the club’s annual general meeting, that the majority of members endorsed Huntingdale as the new name.

In doing so, although they weren’t aware of it at the time, they created history, because in the 1950’s, when a name was required to acknowledge the urban growth around the course, the new suburb, and the railway station nearby, were named after the club, and that hasn’t happened anywhere else in Australia.

So, what were the Eastern, now Huntingdale Golf Club members confronted with when they stepped onto the new course for the first time. Just looking at the scorecard was a clear indication that this would be a round of golf like no other.

As mentioned earlier the course measured more than 6,500 metres, at the time the longest championship course in Australia. To put this into perspective, the current reconstruction of the course will present golfers with a total length of around 6,476 metres.

Standard scratch was 78, with a par of 39 for both the outward and inward holes. For the women, then referred to as ‘associate members’, par was 77 – out in 39, back in 38. (Picture - The first scorecard.)

A little generous, perhaps? Hardly! Back in 1941 graphite shafts and titanium heads, hybrids, gap wedges and mini drivers were unheard of, not to mention Pro V1’s and Callaway Chromes.

Woods were just that, wood, with persimmon at the top end, and laminate at the bottom, and while iron shafted clubs were on the rise, they were pretty expensive, which meant the old hickory shafts were still very much in use.

And what about the rough! Dense undergrowth, mainly bracken, lined most of the fairways, to such an extent visitors jokingly referred to the course as ‘Huntingball’, given a wayward tee shot invariably meant a long search for the ball.

Gordan McNally, a former Huntingdale captain, recalled the rough down the right hand side of the 17th (which, incidentally, will be the 11th hole on the new layout) as being quite horrific. “It was full of snakes and sword-grass...the members avoided it like the plague”.

Snake country! Looking south from the Tenth tee.

On the plus side just being able to play the new course was a feat in itself. Petrol rationing severely curtailed the use of private transport, making it nearly impossible for many members to get to Huntingdale. That is, those that were still left. Huntingdale’s membership was reduced by almost two thirds, which in turn caused a severe loss of income and almost brought about the fledgling club’s demise.

Members who were able to visit the course found the playing days to be intermittent, but many of them were only too happy to fill in the time by helping to maintain and improve the course, and assist in the ongoing construction of the clubhouse, which was proving something of a nightmare.

Bert Kellock, another former club captain, recalls Austin and others in the building trade, scrounging raw materials from wherever they could, given the scarcity of them during the war years. “Most of the original clubhouse was built with second hand stuff,” Kellock said. “It functioned very well, but the bloody acoustics were terrible.”

A clubhouse bar is always the focus of attention, but the bar at Huntingdale during these times was of far greater importance than just a place for the members and their guests to celebrate (or commiserate) after a round.

Even with the reduced membership the bar takings at that time were providing the club with its main source of income. While hotels were required to close at 6pm, clubs were under no such restriction and the members and their guests made the most of it.

Their exuberance was tempered somewhat when the Government put restrictions on the quantity of beer and spirits being brewed, and at the same time increased the excise and customs tax on the product.

The bar aside many members felt the clubhouse itself, often crowded and always very noisy, was not fulfilling its purpose. There was fierce competition among the sandbelt clubs to attract new members, and it was suggested the facilities at Huntingdale were not helpful in achieving this

Unfortunately there was very little the committee could do about it. These were tough times. Rather than spend money the club was desperately trying to save some.

Much of the day to day burden fell upon the course curator, Sam Berriman, who worked like a Trojan, but with few staff to assist him he faced a mammoth task in trying to maintain, not just Huntingdale but the layout at Eastern as well, .

At one point the lease on the course at Doncaster was transferred to a private operator, but the war soon put him out of business, and responsibility for the course reverted back to the Huntingdale committee.

That situation eased somewhat when Melbourne Girls Grammar was relocated to Eastern around 1942, pretty much halting play on the course. The following year a committee drawn from local businessmen and sporting clubs in the Balwyn area began negotiations to acquire the lease from Huntingdale.

(This eventually led to the re-establishment of the Eastern GC, which began playing as such in 1945, and upon the death of the landlady, Mrs. Julia Stutt, in 1950, the ‘new’ golf club was able to purchase the property for £50,000.)

At Huntingdale the members were rostered to help with the course maintenance, and House and bar purchases were cut to a minimum. Hot water was only available in the clubhouse at weekends. It was a day to day existence.

Still, the club found itself able to honour its members who were on full time military service. They were made honorary members for the duration of the war, and at its conclusion were welcomed back with open arms.

It can be seen the war years brought with them many hardships, and those trying to keep the golf club afloat sometimes felt they were fighting a losing battle. But in those moments they summoned the spirit which, from the outset, had inspired them to move from the clay course at Eastern to a sandbelt course of unlimited potential.

And, in the end it proved enough. The end of the war brought with it a sense of optimism, and new plans were considered for both the course and the clubhouse.

Once again Huntingdale Golf Club was able to fix its eye firmly on the future.

Brian Meldrum - Commemorative History Update Sub-Committee

HUNTINGDALE GOLF CLUB
www.huntingdalegolf.com.au
Windsor Avenue, Oakleigh South, VIC 3167

P: (03) 9579 4622
E: info@huntingdalegolf.com.au