Romsey Golf Club needs HELP to repair fire damage

Romsey Golf Club need your HELP

- Fire has destroyed our machinery with well over $70,000 in lost equipment and infrastructure

- Without outside funds, we won't be able to replace the damage and rebuild fully.

- We are seeking support from the community to keep the golf course and public park maintained.

International factors have seen shipping charges and the price of replacement machinery more than double in the last few months. Clubs all over SE Australia are vying to replace machinery damaged in fires and floods. No matter how well we were insured, we could not have predicted these massive increases.

Romsey Golf Club is a total volunteer run, Not For Profit club. We are situated within Romsey Park, the town’s largest public, open green space.

The area now known as “Romsey Park” was permanently reserved from sale as a site or place for a Public Park under the provisions of The Land Act 1869. Romsey Park hosts all the town’s sporting teams as well as the Recreation Centre, the Scouts/Cubs and the Romsey Men’s Shed. RGC maintains and improves about 80% of this public space. We are more than happy for community members to use the park for relaxed or more energetic exercise, for a stroll with friends, family or just bub in the pram or to exercise their dogs (please us the bins)

Volunteers cut the rough (all our part of the park that is not the golf course) fairways, surround and greens, they spray and fertilise the greens and fairways, plant and maintain the numerous indigenous trees and flowering bushes, plant and maintain many gardens, service the club’s machinery and monitor and repair the irrigation system. This great commitment and enormous amount of hard work has the course looking its best ever. In 2022 Romsey Golf Club celebrated its centenary, a great event that drew current and ex-members from all over Australia. We hosted three days of golf drawing players and friends from many local and more distant clubs.

On Thursday, October 6th, fire struck the Romsey Golf Club machinery and work shed. The club has worked for many years to build up our machinery, we have steadily upgraded our mowers etc and made sure we had some form of backup for every element of the work we do. By 2022 the club had its best every ground’s maintenance machinery.

The fire totally destroyed or irreversibly damaged:-

• The John Deere Fairway Mower,

• The Toro Greens’ Mower

• 18 brand new flagpoles and flags,

• 500m of 40mm and 63mm purple (recycled water) pipe

• 250m of green line irrigation pipe,

• Numerous 40mm, 63mm, & 25mm fittings

• Numerous fairway and tee sprinklers

• 15 motion-activated sprinklers & associated pipe and fittings (to keep Corellas off the greens)

• Pole-saw, whipper-snipper & spare tyres for many machines

• Four Solo 15l backpacks and numerous other small items

• 100m of 50mm socked agi-pipe

• 100m of 100mm socked agi-pipe

• 50 of flat, socked agi-pipe

• ~50m of 100mm stormwater pipe and fittings

• the rough slasher (rear wheels and gearbox cooked, frame warped)

• the small John Deere Front End Loader (rear end cooked, electric wiring fried)

• the 400l Hardi Boom Spray, (liquid container melted & warped, piping & fittngs cooked)

• the Green’s Roller (seat and controls melted, wiring cooked, wheels burnt) and

• the club’s 45Hp tractor (rear cabin window & hydraulic hoses cooked, cabin stinks)

• The structure of the shed was severely impacted, its condition is being reviewed

• Without the shed repairs, well over $50,000 has been totally lost and there is more than $20,000 worth of repairs

Members have worked very hard to clear out the damaged items, resuscitate, where possible, some of the machinery & make the safe areas of the shed roof weatherproof. The recovery work is just beginning.

If you would like to make a donation directly to the Romsey Golf Club account, please get in touch with our Treasurer, Kevin Dunn [email redacted]