The Gold Coast has seemingly been on a path of continually reinventing itself for nearly four decades. Never was there a truer marketing slogan than the “ever changing, always amazing Gold Coast” campaign of a few years ago.
But if you look hard enough you will find some institutions that have aged gracefully while most of the tourist strip has been, at some stage in recent years, torn down and rebuilt in the name of progress. In that sense, it is refreshing that less than two minutes’ drive from the heart of this jungle of beachside high-rise apartments lies a golfing oasis where the game as first played more than 80 years ago.
Golf was first played on the rolling land now occupied by the Southport Golf Club in 1924, which makes it the oldest golf course on the Coast, pre-dating the Coolangatta & Tweed Heads Golf Club by three years. Back then, the land was part of a complex that included a cinema and hotel having earlier been purchased from a dairy farmer. A nine-hole course covered the property for many years and it wasn’t until 1937 that the Greater Southport Golf Club was established. More land was purchased after World War II and the layout was extended to 18 holes and within a few years the club dropped the ‘Greater’ from its name.
The membership grew and the layout gradually evolved over the following three decades but by the early 1980s the club looked to upgrade the layout and then modernise the clubhouse.