Manawatu¯ Golf Club fighting new-neighbour threat

As the jingle goes, everybody needs good neighbours – and especially golf courses, which are under threat throughout the country.

Bureaucrats see only green building sites on Chamberlain Park in Auckland and the mayor of New Plymouth has threatened to carve off half of the Fitzroy Golf Club links for housing, simply to cash up.

One of the Manawatu¯ Golf Club’s reciprocal clubs, Miramar, has the shadow of Wellington Airport looming over it.

Auckland and Waikato clubs have had to re-route holes because of forced changes, and have had trees deliberately poisoned by neighbours.

Now the prized Manawatu¯ , which has minded its own business for 122 years at Hokowhitu, finds it might soon have a tenticular new neighbour on the 10-hectare Hokowhitu Campus site and future wealthy inhabitants, while eager for golf views, might not be kindly disposed to a few wayward projectiles.

Such scenery would be lucrative for the developer, but when his job is done, the club might find its southern holes under threat and would be left to litigate.

The Manawatu¯ Golf Club foresees that if luxury houses were implanted on the boundaries of their 11th, 12th, 14th and 15th holes and a dimpled white ball sliced into someone’s muesli, they might go running to the beak on the bench.

Fortunately, the club is challenging Plan Change 23, enacted to change the zoning from institutional to residential. The golf club, looking to safeguard its future, sought out barrister John Maassen, a foremost planning authority, as its panzer advocate to drive holes through many of the provisions.

Now, I must own up to having also delivered a submission in the golf club’s interest last week in the cloistered council temple, extolling the virtues of what I consider the most pristine outdoor sports venue in the province.

We entered as a phalanx of a half dozen and I’m sure the serious commissioners, council officers and the developers had a double take when upwards of 100 club members filed in en masse to the back benches.

Manawatu¯ ’s members have shown through various internal special general meetings that it’s all on when they’re pushed too far.

A club that has existed since 1895 is entitled to security of tenure.

The Hokowhitu course is variously rated in the top six in the country, outside those private resort courses owned by tycoons, and hosts about 32,000 rounds of golf a year.

It was on the nose that the golf club was not consulted – it took the club to get on the blower – and by then the planning framework had been decided. Only this week the council belatedly flew a drone over the affected boundaries for a bird’s-eye view.

Club members bristled when they heard of a arrogant suggestion that their trees grown over many years to ward off stray balls would have to be felled.

At last week’s hearing, it took careful concentration to understand such terms as ‘‘reverse sensitivities’’, ‘‘the interface’’ and ‘‘overlay’’ in my first exposure to strange town-planning jargon.

Reverse sensitivities, I believe, refers to a neighbour who buys next to an airport and then objects to the aroma of jet fuel, or to the purr of mowers cutting golf fairways from 7am, or who moves in next to our Arena and lays an injunction against the stock cars.

The threat is real. We lost an entry-level golf course, Brookfields Park at Te Matai, after legal action from a neighbour.

Clearly, in this case, there needs to be a buffer zone between the boundary and housing, which could include a roadway and covenants to safeguard the golf club.

It also seems nuts to plan reserve areas on the subdivision’s extremities, where kids might be playing.

Overseas, householders so relish having golf views they erect protective fences at their own cost.

In this case, it might have been whole lot easier had Massey University held on to what is a rather green site and not decided to cash up.

Maybe a dam could have been built there to ensure we no longer waste all our winter rainfall.

Aussies can be tamed

It didn’t take long for the distasteful Australian habit of sledging to rear in the Ashes cricket series.

It is so ingrained in our fellow antipodeans they truck it out in most of their sports and cannot understand why those of superior lineage find it offensive.

As recently as the 1960s, Palmerston North senior cricketing citizen Bryan Northcott arrived at the then Sportsground, now Fitzherbert Park, and was asked to umpire a match involving Australian Universities.

The studious ones opened the bowling and in the first over the bowler aggressively bellowed out four appeals.

So, in his next over, our umpire instantly hollered, ‘‘no ball’’.

‘‘That wasn’t a no-ball,’’ the Aussie complained.

‘‘I know,’’ said the ump. ‘‘But your four appeals weren’t appeals either.’’

With that the Aussie settled down and got on with the game. They were quite good mates by the end of the game.