Magazine - Innovative Storm Water Harvesting.

By Michael Picken in Golf on 30th Oct 2007 7:00

First of a 6-part article from Michael Picken, Superintendent at Riversdale Golf Club and ex president of the V.G.C.S.A. The article is on works to improve water capacity at the Golf Course over 5 years.

First we will take a quick look at the history of Riversdale. Riversdale Golf Club was established in 1892 and moved from Surrey Hills to Mt Waverley in 1927, the land consists of 48 hectares. The current site is situated on the edge of the famous sand belt area. Riversdale is the 2nd oldest club in Victoria behind Royal Melbourne.

Riversdale is a very undulating layout built on silty loam to pure clay. The course is cleverly designed, and tight with heavily tree lined fairways that are a mix of native and European species.  Riversdale were one of the first to commence establishing Santa Anna fairways in 1983, this was completed in 1991. They also commenced reconstruction of all greens to a sand base in 1996, completing this in 2005.
The irrigation system was upgraded from the original 1976 irrigation system, to Toro Site Pro 1996 and is about to upgraded again this year.

Originally, irrigation needs were drawn from the Damper Creek, which traverses the course.

As water demands increased back in the 1960's coinciding with greater expectations of course presentation, our club embarked on a bid to harness water flows passing through the property that followed the course of the Damper Creek. The creek traverses the golf course at its lowest gradient. This stream meanders many kilometres through the Monash development. Road drainage and housing being the main sourse of the water. Around the mid 60's respected Melbourne engineers Guttridge & Davey  were contracted to formulate and construct a narrow diversion across the creek, which moved flows into a small holding dam, allowing Riversdale to then pump from that dam up to the main 10ML reticulation pond located a further 300m into the property. All this worked reasonably well until it was found that the water travelling the creek was developing high salt readings, causing the prevailing cool season grasses to suffer summer die-back. As a consequence the creek was abandoned as a water source in the mid 70's.

Numerous weeds then enveloped the creek and before long it was almost chocked, and had become a visual blight on the golf course.

As local councils became more enviromentally conscious in the early 90's, Damper Creek received a face-lift with much of it being remodelled and treated for weed invasion.



We will continue with more articles on this topic later in the week.
To see more about Riversdale: www.riversdalegolf.com.au

Read more articles in Golf, by Michael Picken or from October 2007.