POWELL Bill Powell Remembers

Bill Powell has a remarkable record of employment. He has worked for only one employer - the Waverley Golf Club - throughout his fifty year career as a greenkeeper. However, the really incredible part is that in all that time Bill has never missed a day's work. In this day and age the idea of a person going through a single year without a day or two off is almost unheard of. To consider that Bill has never taken a 'sickie' in fifty years is almost unbelievable. But when you meet Bill any doubts are quickly dispelled. The outdoor life has obviously agreed with him; at the age of 65 he is as strong and fit and still enjoying his job as much as he ever has.

Bill's last illness occurred shortly after he left school at the age of fifteen. He was laid up for a week with the measles and when that had passed he commenced full-time work at the golf club which was then located across the road from his parents' dairy farm in Glen Waverley.

Birth of Waverley Golf Club

Waverley Golf Club was the brainchild of a married couple, John and Ida Crosby. They had been members of Kingston Heath Golf Club but wanted to create a club where mixed groups could play together regularly and where women would have equal rights. They won the support of some golfing friends and on 1st September 1926 held a meeting at which it was decided to construct a nine hole course on thirty acres of land owned by Ida Crosby in Waverley Road, Glen Waverley. Using hand tools, the few enthusiastic foundation members carved out the course and constructed a 16ft x 10 ft weatherboard clubhouse. They must have worked very hard because play on the course was possible midway through 1927.

In 1937 the Crosbys bought 50 adjoining acres on the north-east corner of Waverley and Blackburn Roads and once again the members set to with a will to turn scrub into another nine holes. This time, however, the work was made easier with the help of some horse-drawn equipment. The 18 hole course was opened in 1938.

Bill's Career with Waverley Golf Course Begins

Four years later Bill Powell's father made a decision that was to have a momentous effect on Bill's life. The Powell family moved from their farm at Mt Franklin near Daylesford to a dairy farm on the south-east corner of Waverley and Blackburn Roads, opposite the entrance to the Golf Club. Bill was fascinated by the golf course and the game itself and he became a good mate of a boy from a neighbouring farm. Keith Richardson was an outstanding young golfer, winning the Club Championship at the age of 14, and playing alongside Keith, Bill had dreams one day of being a professional golfer. Bill was soon helping the club professional, Cliff Naismith, maintain the course from Monday to Friday and assisting in the pro-shop at the weekend for 10 shillings ($1.00) a day. At the same time he was attending Glen Waverley State School and helping with the morning and afternoon milking of a herd of fifty cows, so his life was extremely busy. As it was wartime and labour was scarce, Cliff was very grateful to have young Bill's enthusiastic assistance. When Bill left school (and had recovered from his bout of measles) he was put on full-time. The date of his commencement was an easily remembered one - 4/4/44.

As a 15 year-old one of his hardest jobs was cutting the eighteen greens once or twice a week with a hand mower. Bill still has this old mower in his shed at home. Another memento of those days of hard physical work is a coring foot fork which was used to remove plugs of earth from the greens to aerate the soil. It would take him a whole day to core one green using this hand tool. Nowadays of course there is a machine for this job which can aerate a green in about 15 minutes.

The Move To Rowville

By 1961 land values in the Waverley area had sky rocketed and rising rental forced the Club to search for another site. They looked at possible locations in the popular sand belt area around Keysborough but the asking prices were beyond the Club's resources. They finally settled on a 100 acre site situated between Stud Road and Bergins Road in Rowville. The price was within the Club's means because a large part of the area was an easement for the SEC high tension power lines. The privately owned farm land cost an average of $1,000 an acre. Bill had become the Club curator in 1953 and willingly undertook the tasks of designing and building the new course. He was assisted by a three man staff: Les Gunther, George Boyle and his father Rees, and by the voluntary work of the members, about 100 of whom stuck with the Club in its move to Rowville. Throughout the 18 months of construction of the first 12 holes, Bill and his work mates had to also keep the course in Glen Waverley up to scratch. When it was finally closed in 1963 prior to residential sub-division, Bill removed the turf from the greens and brought it to Rowville. The original clubhouse at Rowville was constructed from two army huts that had accommodated the army dental clinic at Albert Park.

Bill recalled starting work at Rowville on New Year's Day 1961 dismantling old fences and pig pens along the northern boundary. Their efforts were cut short when Mrs Croy, the owner of this 30 acre part of the course, came down the paddock waving a shovel at them protesting that she hadn't yet received her final payment from the Club. So they were forced to retreat to another part of the site.

There were worse hazards than Mrs Croy. The course was alive with snakes - copperheads mainly and black snakes - and Bill estimated that they killed about one a day. While cleaning the scrub, they came across an old hut in an area between what is now the 3rd and 5th fairways. Bill was later told that the hut had been the home of an old hermit, Fred Johanson, who had died of gangrene there shortly before the club bought the land.

After almost three years of hard work, the 18 hole course was finished in October 1963. The new course was officially opened on 23rd November 1963, a day memorable because of a dark event on the other side of the world - the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Not long after the course was completed a piece of land was lost from the area of the 6th tee when Bergins Road was realigned and sealed to provide a better access road to the Police Paddocks, site of the 1964 World Jamboree. This work had an intriguing consequence. Some years late a man was found guilty of murdering a girl at Jordanville. After the verdict he admitted that he had previously murdered a woman at St Kilda and had buried her body at Rowville near where Bergins Road formerly ran into the Police Paddocks. He spent a day with a large number of police going over the area but the realignment of the road surface confused him, he claimed, and the body was never found.

Besides the never-ending maintenance of the course, Bill has supervised a continuing program of drainage improvement to combat the problem of Rowville's boggy clay soil as well as the planting of thousands of trees. Because of this latter activity the course has become a sanctuary for dozens of species of native birds. A bargain investment Bill was proud of was the purchase - for only $17,000 - of the Club's huge machinery shed. It had formerly been used at VFL Park by Kerry Packer's curator to house the 'portable' turf wickets used at the Park in the first year of the breakaway World Series cricket.

Bill stepped down from the position of Course Superintendent in 1987 to devote himself to the bowling greens. He built a second green in that year; he had laid the original one in 1964. His expertise as a greenkeeper was recognised in a dramatic way in 1990 when he was chosen to go to Guangzho (formerly Canton) in China to put down the first bowling green ever constructed in that country.

Bill was the secretary of the Victorian Golf Course Superintendents' Association for twelve years between 1977 and 1988 and is regarded with enormous respect by his colleagues in the field. He is a Life Member of the Association.

Bill is, of course, held in high esteem by all associated with Waverley Golf Club and he was made a Life Member in 1983 for his outstanding services. To honour his 50th anniversary with the Club, the No. 1 bowling green was named "The Bill Powell Green" at a ceremony on 27th March 1994.

One thing is certain, despite these honours, Bill will continue to go about his work in his characteristically humble and conscientious way. He has no thought of retirement. Not content with never having missed a day between Monday and Friday, he can be seen on Saturdays playing as a member of the Club's No. 1 team that competes in Division 2 of the RVBA on his own beloved greens.

Bill still lives in Mount Waverley near the old site of the golf club with his wife Mary. They have been married for 37 years. Their son Graham is a greenkeeper in Devonport and their daughter Sandra lives in St Kilda.

Interviewed by Bryan Power

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