Long Reef Golf Club celebrates its centenary as the only true golf links on the peninsula
Carpeting the long, low form of Long Reef is one of the peninsula’s oldest golf clubs, which this year marks its centenary.
Manly
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Carpeting the long, low form of Long Reef is one of the peninsula’s oldest golf clubs, which this year marks its centenary.
One of the many public and private golf courses dotted across the northern beaches, Long Reef is the only links-style golf course in that it is surrounded by water on three sides, like the spiritual home of golfers, St Andrews in Scotland.
But Long Reef was a different place in 1788, when the picturesque headland was home to wetlands and dunes, and was covered in heaths, open woodland, closed forest, grasslands and with scrub and vines along the dunes.
Long Reef was one of the few fertile locations along the coast and by 1814 had been promised to William Cossar, was formally granted an area of more than 200ha in 1819.
Cossar was also granted another 80ha immediately south of Long Reef, covering all of Dee Why Lagoon.
By 1822, all of Cossar’s land had been purchased by Matthew Bacon, who didn’t live there but kept nearly 5ha under cultivation.
In 1825, Long Reef was advertised for sale, comprising “a substantial farmhouse, two storeys high, with four good rooms, besides skillions, also a barn, a paddock about seven acres (2.8ha), a garden of five acres (2ha) and salt works comprising two excellent pans capable of boiling 10 hundredweight (508kg) of sale per day”.
Long Reef was purchased by D’Arcy Wentworth, who sold it soon after to James Jenkins, whose family retained the land until 1900, when it was conveyed to the Salvation Army in return for an annuity for the remaining members of the Jenkins family.
In 1903 the acting Lands Minister received a delegation of peninsula residents, led by Manly Mayor and Warringah MP Ellison Quirk, asking the State Government to resume 80ha at Long Reef and then subdivide it for residential development.
Thankfully the Government ignored the request but in 1911 it announced it would resume 72ha at Long Reef as part of a larger program of coastal and harbour foreshore resumptions.
After Long Reef was resumed for public recreation in 1912, it was named Griffith Park in honour of the Minister of Works at the time who secured the land for the public, Arthur Griffith.
The State Government asked Warringah Council, which had been incorporated only six years earlier, if it would act as Trustee of the resumed land and what ideas it might have for the headland.
The council’s proposed building a road around the headland from Dee Why Lagoon to Collaroy, with a pond in the centre that would be reclaimed and the banks of which would be planted with ornamental trees and shrubs.
On the northern side of Long Reef, the council proposed building boatsheds and refreshment rooms, while on the reserve would be built four tea rooms and seven waiting sheds.
The council also proposed laying out a cricket oval, football ground and enclosures for tennis and lawn bowls.
The cost of the works was estimated at £6000, which the council proposed to recoup by making provision for 50 residential lots along the eastern side of Pittwater Rd and the southern side of Anzac Ave, as well as 67 camp sites for rental near where Long Reef SLSC now stands.
Thankfully the Lands Department rejected the council’s proposal, so the council in turn rejected the department’s invitation to be the park’s Trustee.
In March 1914 Warringah Shire Council finally agreed to act as Trustee but with the council’s previous plan having been rejected and so much vacant land lying vacant, there was no lack of suggestions about the use of the land, although a request by the Collaroy sub-branch of the RSL to build a clubhouse near the corner of Pittwater Rd and Anzac Ave was rejected.
In 1920, golfers began lobbying Warringah Council to allow a large part of Long Reef to be developed as a golf course.
A public meeting was held in Twight’s tea rooms at Collaroy on May 14, 1921, at which it was decided to form the Long Reef Golf Club and to formally seek the permission of Warringah Council to use a large portion of Griffith Park as a golf course. It didn’t hurt that the chairman of the public meeting was Arthur Parr, the president of Warringah Council.
The club’s draft rules were adopted on May 28 and formal permission to establish a club was given by Warringah Council on June 1.
The new club was born without a home but received permission from Warringah Council in 1922 to build a clubhouse and the new structure – humble but adequate for its purposes – was opened in February 1923.
Throughout the 1920s, the clubhouse was modified and electricity and plumbing were connected.
The golf course was initially of nine holes but in 1927 Warringah Council gave the club permission to expand the course to 18 holes by draining the wetlands at the lower ground in the middle of the headland.
Because no value was placed on swamps, “the clearing of natural vegetation and biological filters, draining, filling and stormwater diversions were seen as improvements”.
Construction of the expanded layout was delayed by the Depression but by 1937 the course was at its maximum extent, since which time it has been reduced under environmental and social pressures.
World War II brought difficult times to Long Reef Golf Club as, like all sporting clubs, the younger men enlisted, leaving the clubs short of members and money.
Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor and Japan’s entry into World War II, the military authorities began strengthening the defences of Sydney.
At Long Reef, this involved levelling the sand dunes on the southern side of the golf course, the siting of 12 machine gun posts and dugouts, and the installation of hundreds of metres of barbed wire, all of which was undertaken by members of the 7 Garrison Battalion.
The army also decided to establish a field firing range at Long Reef for light and medium machine guns and for 3-inch mortars and grenade dischargers.
The army assured the golf club that it would not use Griffith Park on weekends, would give two days’ notice of intent to use it and would not drive tracked vehicles over greens.
Advertisements were placed in newspapers indicating the army’s intent to conduct live firing at Long Reef and red flags were flown on the highest point of the headland and at the entrance to the golf course during live firings.
The levelling of the sand dunes on the southern side of the golf course allowed sand to be blown onto several fairways and greens, making them unfit for golf, and filled a well the club had dug to provide water for the course’s greens.
The drifting sand also overwhelmed the drainage system in the lowest part of the course and shrapnel and bomb splinters left lying around damaged the blades of the club’s mowers at a time when anything made of steel was hard to come by. Brush fences were erected in an attempt to prevent the sand drifting onto the course but these were quickly overwhelmed.
The sand drift and other damage reduced the number of usable holes on the golf course from 18 to 10.
By September 1943, the field firing range was no longer required by the army,
and it was vacated the following month.
The club lodged a claim for compensation for the damage and for lost earnings during the army’s occupation and was eventually awarded £2116.19.4 for the club and £52.10.0 for the designer of the restoration of the course.
But the end of the war and the acquisition of a liquor licence in 1947 saw a slow return to prosperity for the club and an extensive rebuilding of the clubhouse.
Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, the clubhouse was substantially rebuilt and modernised, despite financial difficulties, and the course has been constantly upgraded.
From the beginning of the 19th century, the natural vegetation on the headland was devastated by man and beast, at times leaving the headland virtually treeless, although at times the club has sought to reverse the trend.
From the 1930s, the club planted a variety of trees and shrubs, and in recent years has implemented wetland rehabilitation works in the middle of Griffith Park, at the same time solving the club’s stormwater retention problem.
Despite being so exposed to the elements and at the mercy of the wind and sky, and despite the growth of suburban development in the area and the consequent pressures on public open space, Long Reef Golf Club has survived the years well – for 100 years an unmistakeable landmark on the peninsula coastline and a part of the peninsula’s golfing history.
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