Magazine - Same Land, Different Game

By Editor in Golf on 21st Feb 2010 14:50

It's now a rugged golf course, but once it was the birthplace of modern New Zealand sheep breeding.

The white ball bounces twice and rolls to a halt besde a round black sheep poo. Tony Parker expertly flicks the poo aside and, with a smooth swing, sends the ball soaring toward a small green ringed by a two-wire electric fence. "Watching are a few romneys and his fellow golf course architect and builder, son John. "Nice shot; not too bad for an old fella," remarks his son with a grin. The sheep say nothing.

The nine-hole course at Wairunga, 450 metres above Hawke's Bay's Waimarama beach resort, is on a farm that could lay claim to being the birthplace of modern New Zealand sheep breeding. These days, its pioneering sheep breeder has put away his weighing machine and notebooks and is more often seen with a pitching wedge in his hands.

The course will never rival jeweller Michael Hill's hand-crafted Queenstown fairways as a New Zealand Open venue. But it is just as challenging – holes hemmed in by ancient titoki and tawa trees, elevated tees above 100m-deep bluffs and rough that is, well, rough. And then there's the sheep poo littering the fairways – a hazard not found in similar tourist hotspots. It's a good idea not to play barefoot.

Despite, or maybe because of, these features, the Wairunga golf course is thriving. Its 28 members pay $75 for a season's membership and a Wednesday night twilight competition is particularly popular. In summer, holidaymakers come up from the beach, or stroll over from the farm's tourist cottages, for a game at $10 a round. They are given a half-set of clubs in a sewn-up old trouser leg to carry.

In these times of fluctuating meat prices and sinking wool returns, it would be easy to say the course was built to tap into the tourism market and bring in extra income, but Mr Parker is having none of that. "It was just a bit of fun," he smiles. "Someone suggested, probably not too seriously, that we could put in a golf course and straight away, before I had a change of mind, I got cracking with the bulldozer."

That was 12 years ago and now Mr Parker, 79, has retired to town. He is a regular visitor to make sure the course is still playing well but greenkeeping duties have been taken over by John, who with wife Paulette and their young children, now runs the farm.

Wairunga has been in the Parker family since it was cleared from the bush after World War I.

At Wairunga today, on 226ha, John runs 1300 romney ewes, reduced from 1800 in recent years because of drought, and 130-150 beef cattle.

Whether it was created to earn extra income or not, the golf course attracts many visitors. A thousand people visit the farm each year to play golf, stay in the two cottages, which sleep 12, or to walk over a 10-kilometre track, shared with a neighbour's farm, that makes its way through bush remnants to a 520m summit with spectacular views.

The bush has been added to with plantings of rimu, maire, beech, pittosporums, kauri, totara and cabbage trees.

On the golf course, father and son look over their creation with pride. They are pleased they went to the extra trouble of installing water sprinklers when it was built and say the sheep are a valuable grazing tool that means upkeep is reduced to just a few hours of green mowing a week.

Surprisingly, they weren't golfers before they built the course, but certainly are now. "I've joined the Hastings Golf Club at Bridge Pa and play there twice a week," Mr Parker says.

"But I know which one I prefer. We may not be as well groomed but we're just as challenging and, besides, there's nothing like playing on a course you've built yourself."

Source & More: www.wairungahawkesbay.co.nz

Read more articles in Golf, by Editor or from February 2010.