Nambour Golf Club

Origins

Few golf clubs can claim to have relocated twice before settling into a permanent home, but Nambour Golf Club did exactly that in its first two decades.

The club was founded in 1926, when, as one early club history put it, the town's elders decided Nambour was ready for "a new idol: golf." A group of local figures — among them Frank Whalley, Bob Malloy and Walter Tiplady — leased a stretch of ground known as Midgley's Paddock, chosen because it offered the large, undulating terrain with natural sand and waterways golf needed. Around 30 members joined the original layout.

A decade later, in 1936, the club relocated to a dairy farm at Woombye leased from local landholder George Reynolds, where greens had to be fenced off to keep grazing cattle away. It wasn't until 1947 that the club found its permanent home on its current site, opening as a nine-hole, par-36 course.

Development

The course reached its present 18-hole layout in 1967, after member Roy Charlton negotiated a land exchange with the Forestry Department to secure the extra ground required. Membership grew alongside the course, from around 30 founding members in 1926 to more than 400 by 1986, the year the club formally incorporated.

Much of that growth was steered by long-serving volunteers rather than paid staff. Jack Baguley, the club's first professional, spent 44 years at Nambour, from 1933 to 1977, combining the roles of instructor, greenkeeper and clubhouse hand — the kind of do-everything involvement that shaped the club through most of its history.