Ruth Liston wants to make something clear from the outset.
“This isn’t about being anti-golf,” the Melbourne woman says. “It’s not that we think the golfers are elitist. We have continually said we know golf on this nine-hole public course is not played by Donald Trump-types.
“It’s just so obvious that our community lacks shared space and we look at a spectacular space like this and think how can we put it to best use for the people who live near it.”
“This land” is Northcote public golf course, a 25-hectare council-owned oasis in the northern suburbs of Melbourne that, for the past couple of years, has been at the centre of a highly emotive turf war that is becoming a recurring headache for Australia’s golfing community. When the city’s Covid-19 lockdowns forced the temporary closure of the course, locals forced to socialise outdoors flocked to its wide open spaces and liked what they found.
“It was like a portal to another world,” says Liston, who would go on to become a driving force of the campaign to “unlock” the course. “It felt like being in London’s Hyde Park and it blew our minds.”
So much so that when golf returned, locals launched a campaign calling on the council to return the land to the community. As one would expect, the golfing fraternity was not so keen on that idea and, after almost two years of petitions being signed, proposals being debated and Facebook groups being trolled, Darebin city council last month rejected a move to open the space to the public after 3pm or allocate non-golf days.
Instead, golfers will retain full access to the nine-hole course, although it will be reconfigured to account for 5.72ha allocated to become public land for “golf-adjacent activities”.
“Northcote was a tremendous outcome,” says Damien de Bohun, Golf Australia’s general manager of clubs and facilities. “They have managed to reconfigure the course to allow some public access [and] we think that’s a really sensible result when there is land to do that.”
Rallying cry
Northcote is the latest in a growing list of public golf facilities that have had to justify their right to hectares of council land. Courses at Victoria Park in Brisbane, Elsternwick in Melbourne and Rosny Park in Hobart have reverted to community parklands, while myriad other public courses have felt the heat of closure campaigns or calls to halve their 18-hole layouts.
Golf’s public stoushes have not been restricted to its public courses either. This week a second council became involved in a dispute over plans by Royal Sydney Golf Club in Rose Bay to remove almost 600 mature trees from its course. The matter is scheduled for a conciliation meeting in September.
Golf Australia’s chief executive, James Sutherland, showed how seriously his organisation is taking the looming threat when he issued a rallying cry to the nation’s golfers at the height of the battle for Northcote.
“We need to respond and the time is now,” he wrote in a letter urging “golfers and golf people” to complete Darebin city council’s survey.
“Even if you have never played at Northcote or even seen the course, it doesn’t matter because public golf is the estuary of our game. It is where most people start. Take it away and we don’t have a game … golf needs to stand its ground.”
That sentiment is echoed by Bill Jennings, a Darebin local and “occasional” golfer who put his hand up to lead the campaign to save the course, and is now overseeing the Northcote Community & Golf Hub’s vision to “better serve our community”.
“If public golf courses are going to continue into the future in the inner city, our message to any other public golf course is to be proactive,” he says. “Don’t react when it suddenly becomes a local political issue …
“The onus is on public courses to recognise the challenge of increasing populations and how we can share the space creatively so others in the community can use the space as well.”
From where Liston stands, such talk is laughable. “Any conversation I’ve had with the golfers has been, ‘Yes, we want a solution but golf has to remain nine holes 24/7,’” she says, adding: “This decision has squished a community of many thousands into a small pocket of land that is going to be overused. Compare that to the golf course where only one activity can be enjoyed by a limited number of people who don’t truly match the demographics of the people living around it.”
‘They do have an image problem’
In a modern landscape of population pressures, urban density and climate change, Golf Australia knows the battle for public land is just beginning.
“It’s a very real and active conversation for us,” De Bohun says. “A number of other councils that have public golf courses have been in active dialogue with us to find the best solution that retains golf and provides community access.”
Criticisms of a relatively small number of golfers being able to decide the fate of large parcels of land can be even more acute when it comes to private courses, like the exclusive and expensive Royal Sydney.
“The golf club is just trying to benefit a very small and select elite group and that’s not appropriate,” the Greens councillor Nicola Grieve tells Guardian Australia.
When it comes to other environmental impacts, De Bohun says the sport has ambitious goals regarding climate change.
“We believe golf will own the space of being Australia’s greenest sport and that’s not just a play on words,” he says. “There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of outstanding environmental initiatives in and around golf clubs.”
La Trobe University’s Dr Greg Dingle, a sports management lecturer who focuses on sport and climate change, says while Golf Australia may be genuine in its goals, he sees no evidence of “structured thinking” to achieve them.
“I definitely think there are issues relating to golf courses,” he says. “When you talk about one-third of humanity not having sufficient drinkable water and golf courses use large amounts of water, they do have an image problem. You cannot get away from that.”
Dingle says another looming problem for golf courses is their little-known status as a net-emitter of greenhouse gases, thanks largely to the use of nitrate-based fertilisers.
Back at Golf Australia, De Bohun suggests locals pushing for golf courses to be converted into parklands should be careful what they wish for.
“The reality is it’s incredibly costly, in terms of tens of millions of dollars, to reshape a public golf course into a parkland, and [they’re] much more costly to maintain than a golf course,” he says. “It’s not as simple as people like to make out.”
Needless to say, Liston bristles at “the economic rationalist view”.
“I hate that argument of who is going to foot the bill,” she says. “Yes, it costs money but we should be spending money on resources that benefit the whole community for decades to come.
“I don’t think council should only be spending money on roads and bins. I pay my taxes and I would much rather see that money spent on building better parks and sports facilities for the many rather than fairways for the few.”
