Residents fight developers as ‘war on golf’ ramps up
Golf courses around the country are facing closure amid increasing development pressures. One group of Queensland golfers is fighting back.
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When David and Margaret Orr moved into their new home in 2017 they were thrilled they could walk from their back yard onto the first tee of one of Australia’s top golf courses.
Three years later, the once manicured greens at North Lakes Golf Course, north of Brisbane, are overgrown with weeds after the site was sold to developers for a planned retirement village.
The couple find themselves at the frontline of what some in the $1.2bn industry are calling “a war on golf” as courses and driving ranges throughout the country are turned over for parkland, housing and other developments.
The Orrs, both keen golfers who moved from Sydney, were attracted by slick marketing from developer Stockland that boasted an “exclusive selection of home sites nestled by the 18-hole championship golf course” designed by PGA champion Graham Marsh.
“We used to be able to walk out of our backdoor onto the 1st tee,” Mr Orr said. “About 300 homes front directly onto the golf course and it was a selling point.”
Stockland later sold the course to a private operator but it remained a social hub not only for golfers but the local community.
“There was a restaurant where they held steak and Italian nights and a function centre that hosted weddings,” Mr Orr said.
He said the decision to close the course came out of the blue in 2019 and shocked club members and the broader community.
“I was sitting in the clubhouse after a round of golf when the manager came up and told me the course was being shut down,” he recalled. “We were told that golf was a dying sport and the course wasn’t making any money. But there are courses just down the road that are not accepting new members because of demand.”
Property records show the course was sold by a company called Global Sport North Lakes to JH Northlakes for $11.3m in June 2019. JH Northlakes is controlled by Justin Harrison, the head of a Brisbane-based residential aged care developer.
Moreton Bay Regional Council said it had received legal advice that it had to consider a development plan for the retirement village, despite it being listed as a “prohibited development” under its control plan for the area.
North Lakes has become an increasingly bitter flashpoint between players and an alliance of developers, who eye the potential of the land for other uses, and environmentalists who see the courses as environmental wastelands.
Earlier this year Weekend Australian columnist Nicki Gemmell described the sport as “crack cocaine for old white guys” and any course as a “manicured green of disquieting sterility, fertilised with its chemicals and watered to unnatural verdancy in the midst of a parched continent, waiting for the favoured few who can afford their exorbitant fees”.
While golf industry leaders say such extreme views are in the minority, some in the halls of power appear to be listening. In June, Brisbane City Council will shut the iconic Victoria Park Golf Course, operating since 1898, and transform it into a public parkland with what it calls “something for everybody”. Melbourne’s old Elsternwick Golf Course is being redeveloped as a nature reserve, while a developer is pressing ahead with a $300m redevelopment of the former Paradise Palms Golf Course in far north Queensland.
The industry’s peak body, Golf Australia, said membership at golf courses had surged 126 per cent over the past year. Chief executive James Sutherland said that while urbanisation pressures were impacting on the sport, golf courses around the country were continuing to expand.
Mr Sutherland said that if all forms of the game were considered, up to three million Australians picked up a golf club each year. About 400,000 people are club members.
“Golf doesn’t just have to be the 18-hole version, it can be going out to the driving range and hitting 100 balls from a bucket,” Mr Sutherland said. “Golf is a sport for life, improves people’s mental and physical health. We want to continue to grow.”
Back at North Lakes, residents have formed The Save North Lakes Golf Course support group to fight the development.
They say other operators are prepared to take over the course and are concerned an area largely covered in native shrubs and trees will be replaced by buildings. “The golf course is really the lungs of the area,” Mr Orr said.
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