Aussie golf queens

These golf-mad ladies certainly have balls!

Tired of having men dictate when they could hit the green, three golf-loving ladies decided to take matters into their own hands back in 1967.

They began the only femalerun golf club in the country, and this year they’re celebrating its 50th anniversary. Now with 940 members, the Mcleod Country Golf Club, in Mt Ommaney, Brisbane, is still run by women passionate about the game. “A lot of effort went t into this club, and a lot of imagination,” says co-founder Hilda Reed, 90. “And we’re still pushing on, evenn though they said we’dd never last!” Indeed, in the ’60s, lady golfers were called “associates” and theyy usually had no say in the running of a club. Because of their “lesser status”, Hilda says women had to sneak in a game whenever the men weren’t playing. “Most of us were single and working. If we wanted to play a game of golf on the weekend we couldn’t, because the men wanted to play golf on Saturdays.” Eventually, Hilda, Margery Rudder and Kathleen Atherton got teed off at being turfed from the course to make way for the guys. The club president suggested they speak to a company offering land to anyone ne who’d builduild a golf course on it it.

“This was a Sunday afternoon. On Monday I was on the phone,” says Hilda, explaining that 50ha of prime riverfront land was up for sale for just one dollar because a developer was required to build a course there within two years.

In support of their plan, then Queensland Premier Sir Francis Nicklin offered the three women a loan, provided they could raise $8000 of their own. So they organised cheese and wine nights and walkathons, and chipped in a huge $12,000 in no time at all.

Five decades on, and things are very different to 1967. “When this club started, women weren’t part of the business side of golf, they weren’t part of boards,” current president Carolyn Mcilvenny, 56, says. “This club gave women a chance to do that.”

What became a top-class golf course continues to thrive – and while the running of the club is dictated purely by the female board members, men and women can, and do, play together.

“Everyone is welcome. We’re not a women-only club,” Caroline says. “Men are a big part of [it].”

Their dream fulfilled, the club is now looking down its beloved fairway to the next 50 years!

‘Women didn’t have the right to say when we wanted to play’