Inside Golf, Australia. July 2014 | Page 28

clubs

Golf in a small,
NSW rural village
Inside Golf’s DAVID NEWBERY ventured off-the-beatentrack and discovered a nine-hole golf course where
serenity rules even at Death Valley, Pinball Alley and the
Bermuda Triangle

I

T’S 8.25 on a heavenly Wednesday morning
when I drive into Tabulam Golf Club’s
car park and pull into a parking spot just
metres from the “clubhouse”.
Well, truth be told, there isn’t really a
clubhouse – it’s actually a shed with a few
tables and benches, a local rules chalk board
and a section where machinery and few old
golf clubs are stored.
I’m hoping the parking spot isn’t reserved
for club president Chris Beasley, whom I’ve
arranged to meet.
Unlike most clubs in the “big smoke”,
Tabulam Golf Club doesn’t reserve parking
spots for its committee members.
In this picturesque rural village (population
around 500) in the far northeast of New South
Wales it is first in, best dressed.
I’ve always wondered why committee
members are allocated parking at the entrance
to the clubhouse ahead of paying customers,
members and the disabled.
But I digress.
Tabulam Golf Club member Brian Godden is
first to arrive.
Brian, along with playing partners Arthur

Ramsay and Irishman Denis O’Rourke, play golf
three times a week.
Today they are the only players on the
golf course, but come Saturday there’ll be
around 20 playing. That’s 80 per cent of the
membership.

Tabulam golf course’s infamous seventh
hole. INSET: Club president Chris Beasley and
secretary Steve Symonds.

I reintroduced myself to Brian, whom I’d met
a day earlier in the middle of the shopping
precinct’s main road outside the Hungry Gecko
Café and diagonally opposite the pub.
The café is where Brian, Denis and Arthur
rendezvous for coffee and a bite to eat after a
round.
While waiting for president Chris to arrive,
Brian gives me a brief tour of the course.
He tells me he is a musician who played in
a number of bands in the 1960s before taking
his talents to America where he spent 40 years
in the music scene.
“I played guitar for the Raiders, the Daily
Planet and a few other bands in Sydney and
Melbourne before going to America,” he said.

“We call it Death Valley … for obvious
reasons,” Brian laughs.

1960s were a great time to be in the music
business.”
We reach the seventh hole and Brian points
out a small, disused cemetery.
One headstone reveals a local policeman
was lost in a flood 150 years ago. This month,
the club will hold a memorial golf day to
remember him.

“Arthur (Ramsay), who you’ll meet later,
managed one of the bands.

Out on the golf course, it’s dead quiet.
There’s no passing traffic, no houses
encroaching on the fairways, no mobile
phones ringing and no worries. Brilliant.

“I had my first gig when I was 14 years old
and turned professional when I was 15. The

To reach the fairway from the seventh tee,
players have to hit over water.

The short nine-hole course is without
bunkers, but does have out of bounds on five
holes – the first, second, third, seventh and
ninth.
Other hazards include Pinball Alley
(between the third and fourth holes) and the
Bermuda Triangle (fourth, fifth and sixth).
“If you drive it into the trees between the
third and fourth holes, your ball could bounce
around in the trees until you get out,” Brian
said.
Back at the shed, secretary Steve Symonds,
the local weather man, arrives and tells me
Tabulam Golf Club first opened in 1992 when
a keen band of potential golfers leased land
from the local real estate agent.

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July 2014 | www.insidegolf.com.au

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