Maroochy River Golf Club | Our Amazing Volunteers

16 Nov Our Amazing Volunteers

Posted at 13:41h in Course, Members by Bob Exton

The current group of volunteers working to enhance our club here at Maroochy River can trace their foundations back to our Horton Park days. Volunteers regularly met ever since the Horton Park was first proposed to cultivate holes, plant trees, remove branches and regularly help out our small band of dedicated groundsmen.

With the move to Maroochy River, it was realized that in order to get the most value for our money our groundsmen would have to be split; maintaining the Horton Park Course as well as providing man power to save on development costs at Maroochy River.

Some of the dedicated volunteers spent nearly two years driving slashers and mowers here at Maroochy River well before we took possession of the course.

Gardens

Since our inception, the volunteers have been instrumental in helping to develop the gardens. There are over 3ha of gardens out on the course and to promote healthy trees and shrubs, it was necessary to keep the garden beds mulched not only to keep the weeds at bay but to also provide a healthy soil profile for the plants. It took 10 volunteers a year, working 3hrs per week, to mulch all the gardens.

The initial mulch bill was $64,000 to create the gardens. Over the years the Vets Club has provided transport costs to bring in mulch from the Council Recycling Centre, but we are fortunate that our gardener Kim has negotiated with local tree lopping companies to keep us supplied with mulch at no cost to the club.

Trees and shrubs grow much better when they are pruned, and this is another area that the volunteers lend their expertise. This is done yearly under the expert eye of our gardener Kim with John and Steve providing an expert touch.

The need for mulching will always be with us but is now confined to garden edges and occasionally topping up our more open gardens.

The open gardens on the 9th fairway take the volunteers 4 weeks and over 60 truckloads of mulch to keep them healthy.

Mini Golf

The club saved over $100,000 on construction costs in the mini-golf area by taking on the planting of landscape area. Most of the trees, shrubs and grass were cultivated from seed and grown in our own hothouse before being transplanted into the mini-golf area. This was carried out by volunteers under the direction of Kim who was also responsible for the choice of plants and the layout of the plantings. This year it took 12 volunteers 4 weeks to barrow in the mulch to keep the gardens looking great. This will be an ongoing exercise until the plants are able to fill most of the garden space.

Renovations

Since 2016, the volunteers have been involved in providing extra manpower to augment our small ground staff workforce during our 2.5 days of course renovations. This October, the course renovation saw the volunteers perform 100 hours of work from driving trucks, rubbing in cores from the coring machine, emptying catchers, cleaning signs and painting bollards.

Volunteering

When do the volunteers meet? -every Tuesday 7-10
Who can join? – anyone
What do we do? – mulch, prune, spread sand on the tee boxes and driving range, repair pitch marks and tee box divots and weeding to name a few. Our role is supporting the permanent staff in keeping the course, car park, and mini-golf gardens looking great.