Official Cart Path Opening Ceremony

A small ceremony was held on the 3rd hole last Monday, to mark the completion and officially open our new cart paths. The event was attended by Michael Trout, Member for Barron River, Councillor Jessie Richardson, and Murray Smith from Queensland National Parks, Recreation, Sport and Racing who provided the grant funding.

Pictures and the official press release follow.

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Official Opening of Concrete Cart Paths, funding of $77,487.00 provided by QLD Govt Dept NPRSR under the Get in The Game Initiative. Attended by Michael Trout Member for Barron River and Councillor Jessie Richardson

Facility development and infrastructure assistance programs for Not For Profit Community and Sporting organisations do not occur often and we were delighted that our somewhat unusual project received a positive response.

Fortune certainly smiled on us as we took advantage of this opportunity – the timing was just right, the project data was on hand, administrative assistance was provided and we were able to quickly put it all together everything just fell into place.

The cart path project started with one statistic – for a total of 59 days half the course was closed between October 2011 and April 2012 due to wet weather conditions, and this was not an unusual season. Bureau of Meteorology rainfall statistics clearly indicate the trend over past years.

Due to course conditions the number of players the course could accommodate almost halved on these days. The heavy rainfall impacted the playability of the course for a number of days afterwards. Over 2000 rounds of golf were lost and estimated loss of revenue of more than $30,000. In the past three years our course has not been fully utilised for around 66% of the year. It was determined that construction of concrete paths on six of the worst affected holes would enable players to access the full course considerably more throughout the wet season. Our grant application was underway.

A chance phone call to Golf Queensland about the application resulted in valuable assistance from them in securing advice on grant writing and fine tuning the final application. We are very appreciative of the support from Golf Qld.

Special thanks to our Course Superintendent Mark Davis for his meticulous record keeping of rainfall data over many years that provided us with the key focus for our project submission and to Vice President Cathy Smithson for initiating and preparing the grant application.

The contractor, Todd Kelly of Cairns Quality Concreting, provided excellent professional service in delivering the project on time and was flexible and cooperative working on this, at times, challenging site with minimal disruptions.

Thanks to Peter Lazarus, Greens Director on the Board, General Manager Greg Ferry and to the volunteers, staff and members for their support throughout the past four months.

Members and visitors to the course have commented favourably on the overall improvement to the appearance and playability of the course these paths make. The real value of the project will soon be appreciated in the wetter months ahead when the dedicated wet weather golfers find navigating the rain drenched course a whole lot easier![/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

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