About 15 minutes’ drive inland from Port Campbell, Timboon Golf Club is home to a 14-hole golf course and a cohort of members whose friendly wagering makes every shot count.
Twenty or so locals play a $5 winner-takes-all net competition but the real action is the 50 cent ‘units’ played for on every single shot.
“We play for everything. Timboon is famous for the amount of units they play,” says life member and former secretary Bill Norton.
‘Units’ can be won and lost and there are dozens of types because Timboon’s members have adopted previously unheard-of rules from other clubs.
Birdies, greens in regulation, and up and downs from bunkers are worth one unit, a ‘ferret’ (chip-in) and an eagle are worth 2 units and a ‘gopher’ (hole-out from a bunker) carries three units.
Pictured: Bill Norton.
More amusing are the ways units can be lost: a ‘kangaroo’ (out of bounds), ‘Burke and Wills’ (lost ball), ‘troll’ (ball run over a drain cover), ‘snake’ (three putts), ‘python’ (four putts) and an ‘anaconda’ (more than four putts).
“A ‘funeral’ is when, in anger, one buries the clubhead in the ground,” Norton says.
Another unit, a ‘FISH’, was discovered by 14-time Timboon Club Champion Donna Weller during a competition in Melbourne a few years ago.
As Norton recalls, Weller was “playing with these rather well-spoken ladies and one of them had a miss and she said, ‘that’s a FISH’.”
“Donna said, ‘what’s a FISH?’, and this well-spoken lady said, ‘f***, it’s still here’.”
‘Flaggies’ (sinking a putt longer than the flagstick) and a ‘Bin Laden’ (you know roughly where the ball is but can’t find it) have also been popular units at Timboon.
“We did have a ‘Bin Laden’ unit but the Yanks ruined that when they got him,” says Norton.
A more conventional form of gambling at Timboon is the annual footy tipping competition which has its own tab on the club website’s homepage. The worst performer for the season wins the ‘Galah Trophy’ which sits proudly in the clubhouse.
Originally a nine-hole course, Timboon has been at its current site since 1964, was extended to 12 holes and, in the 1980s, two more were added including one hole on the site of a former rubbish tip. For competitions, four holes can be played again from alternative tees to make an 18-hole layout.
“This is the hardest-rated course in Corangamite, so if we go to any other course in Corangamite, which includes Portland and Heywood, we lose bloody shots off our handicap; I reckon it’s a bit rough,” Norton says.
The men’s course record is three under par and held jointly by Wayne Drayton and Alistair Gillin - a 23-time Club Champion who won 19 out of 20 titles from 1995 to 2014.
Another club stalwart is Barry Cook who won 15 titles from 1962 to 1983 and still plays regularly.
In 1974, Cook was playing one group ahead of his dad, Gordon, and had his first hole-in-one on Timboon’s scenic 120-metre seventh. A few minutes later, Gordon aced the same hole.
Timboon's par-three seventh hole.
With striking gum trees and steep hills, many choose to navigate Timboon’s course in a cart.
“We built an extension of the machinery shed to put carts in probably about [2006],” Norton says. “It’s not big enough, it’s filled up; reckon we should have built it twice as big.”
Carts would be no substitute for the mode of transport used during Timboon’s summer twilight competitions in the 1970s.
“This bloke called Bill Neal, before carts, he had a Holden ute and a couple of us would sit on the tailgate and go round the course.
“He’d stop the car, get out of his ute, play his shot.”
Timboon's par-four 13th and, to the left, the local sports oval.
One curious incident in the Club’s history was the discovery, several decades ago, of an unmarked grave adjacent to the first fairway, believed to have been the resting place of a young girl or woman since the 1930s.
“A dozer went ‘clank’, and they got out and had a look and found it was the concrete of this grave and they didn’t know it was there,” Norton says.
“There’s no marker, no date, no nothing.”
Today, Timboon is handling the impact of the coronavirus; the absence of bar takings have been offset partly by the resignation of a full-time greenkeeper in early 2020 and a small spike in membership.
Meanwhile, three mobile phone towers on the course continue to provide good income.
Timboon has given back too.
Over 18 Years, the Club has raised just under $280,000 for the Royal Children’s Hospital’s Good Friday Appeal.
A fully-fledged honesty box Club, Timboon used to pay someone to sit by the first tee and make sure visiting golfers didn’t forget to pay; a job worth about 20 per cent of each green fee.
“We actually made more money by paying a bloke to sit there,” Norton says.
“Bloody boring job; I don’t think anyone else would do it.”
