Forged by fire: The opening of the rebuilt clubhouse at Eastern Golf Club in Victoria’s Yarra Valley closes an unwanted chapter in the club’s history as grand plans lie ahead.
The fire that ravaged Eastern Golf Club two years ago razed its clubhouse and everything in it, but the blaze couldn’t scorch the club’s most important asset: its soul.
This October marks 24 months since the relocated club, which moved from suburban Doncaster to the Yarra Valley in 2015, suffered the worst off-course loss a golf club can experience. Yet there’s a distinct sense of fortitude in the air at the club as it prepares to open its rebuilt clubhouse. Eastern suffered a significant material loss, no question, but the club’s spirit remains unbroken.
The story of the fire warrants a re-cap, as it started a change in buggy and battery-storage policies at many clubs, although somewhat erroneously as it turns out. The fire began within Eastern’s buggy storage space and early reports suggested it was caused by a lithium battery igniting, however it was later found to have originated with a faulty switchboard. That revision proved important for the club when it came to its insurance claim.
“We subsequently had two investigations and it was actually determined in the end to be a fault in the switchboard that backed onto the buggy store,” says Eastern’s captain, Fred Jones. “That was important for the club because if it was determined that it was [caused by] a lithium battery, we would have had to pay 15 percent of the total sum insured as excess, which would’ve been about $4 million.”
There was no literal rebuild in the immediate aftermath of the fire, although Eastern’s staff and volunteers were quick to re-establish whatever services they could in whatever manner was possible.
“We quickly formed an executive committee to make some prompt decisions around what we needed to do to get back up and running,” Jones recalls. “The staff were great in setting up a members’ precinct on our tennis courts with tables, chairs, umbrellas and the like. And we purchased some barbecues from Bunnings and goodness knows what else to be able to service the needs of the members.”
From that humble initial revival came a more long-term option in the form of a demountable facility, and it must be said the temporary clubhouse – while hardly the Taj Mahal – is a more than adequate structure. It offers an ample seating space in front of a broad bar, plus kitchen facilities, a function room and a spacious outdoor area for when the weather is agreeable. The temporary space has more than done the job in the interim.
However, that didn’t stop about 200 members from leaving the club, some because they felt inadequately compensated for their losses when it came to stored equipment destroyed in the fire. (Only $75,000 of the insurance payout was attributed to replacing stored belongings – and had to cover 104 members.) But Jones says nearly half of those members ended up returning in time. Meanwhile, the past six months have seen membership rise by about 500 on the strength of the rebuild and anticipation of what lies ahead at Eastern.
The club has plans to upgrade its practice area and a few other key elements, but most exciting will be the new clubhouse. In a tick for the functionality of the original version, the new build is almost like-for-like, with just a few enhancements.
“We’ve tweaked it in some areas,” Jones says. “The kitchen has been totally redesigned to be more functional and fewer footfalls – more efficient. So that’s been totally reconfigured. But essentially the other areas are pretty much the same. We’ve added some toilets to the breezeway outside the buggy store area just to stop members from needing to walk through the main hallway into the locker rooms if they’re changing nines. We’ve also added a pass-through bar area in the function room because previously if we had a function on, the guests would have to walk through the dining room and around to the members’ bar to get a drink and then take it back around unless you had waited service. We just thought that was a bit of a no-brainer.
“Any other changes have really been due to compliance and change, but you wouldn’t notice it from looking at the building itself. It’s the same footprint, and that was borne out of the members saying, ‘We just want what we had.’”
Eastern relocated from its Doncaster roots to its current site with an official opening on October 16, 2015. The fire, as chance would have it, occurred on the same date in 2023. For a long time it appeared the club would be able to mark the clubhouse’s re-opening on October 16 this year, however the twin anniversaries look set to be missed by a few weeks, with a likely date of late November or early December.
A BUCOLIC BEAUTY
The driveway into Eastern Golf Club builds a sense of anticipation and grandeur, a long road winding through bushland that offers glimpses of the 27-hole championship course before it clears to reveal the impressive new clubhouse. That is the reward for a 50-minute car ride from Melbourne’s CBD that, if anything, establishes a sense of sanctuary from the busyness of the city.
The atmosphere of the property and the golf course itself are everything that visiting, or Victorian, golfers would want out of a golf course located away from the city: an escape. And, if you’re planning on staying, the on-site accommodation.
Golfers begin their experience with uninterrupted views of the spectacular Yarra Ranges in the distance and are then treated to a constant theme of rustic, Australiana bushland surrounding the course. Wildlife is visible and audible on every hole.
It’s also a delightfully fun and thoughtful golf course with three nines that are different enough to stimulate the senses, but similar enough to establish continuity. The three nines feel like one flowing Greg Norman design.
Your correspondent joined Eastern’s operations manager Simon Andrew for a game, and we teed off from the par-5 19th, the opening hole to the East nine, which sets the scene through beautiful vistas of the Yarra Valley and farmland. The sense of escape from the city is, in some way, reflected in the relaxing and, if anything, inspiring tee shots. The fairways feel wide open, and it’s relaxing to be greeted on each tee by gorgeous landscapes instead of narrow, treelined chutes. A golfer wants to reach for the driver on every tee at Eastern and try to land the ball on certain slopes to get a hearty distance boost. The course’s defence is its clever greens, which can be approached from the ground or the air but are firm, fast and ribbed to trouble players who leave their ball in the wrong zone.
The East loop meanders around wetlands with several stout par 5s blending beautifully with short par 4s like the 24th and 27th and tricky par 3s such as the 21st and 25th. The South loop – holes one to nine – take golfers up to the peak of the property for the most stunning scenery and exhilarating holes, from the brutal approach shot over water at the third to the elegance of the seventh, with its sweeping and sloping fairway blending into a perched green, conjuring images of Augusta National. The cadence of Eastern is well paced with the North nine – holes 10 to 18 – offering a reprieve from the dramatic slopes of the South in the form of some enjoyable, flatter holes.
In addition to a wildly fun par-3 course called “Shark Waters”, Eastern has plans underway to upgrade its practice facilities, including a redesigned driving range and a new chipping green. The club’s strategic goal is to grow membership from 1,300 to 1,500, ensuring a sustainable foundation for ongoing works. Eastern has invested to achieve that, with an increased from 13 course staff to 22 and an aim to grow that figure to 30.
Most pleasingly, course architect Harley Kruse has been engaged to deliver a vegetation masterplan, addressing years of ad-hoc planting with a long-term strategy to preserve views of the Yarra Ranges and introduce native grasses. That will hopefully enhance Eastern’s most striking feature, which is its unapologetic Victorian bushland beauty.
“Harley has done a great job with Yarra Yarra [Golf Club on the Melbourne Sandbelt] and he’s just finished with Royal Sydney,” Jones says. “Now he’s in the middle of completing our vegetation masterplan. We want to enhance the beautiful vistas of the Yarra Ranges, so Harley is giving advice, and we’re in the process of implementing that slowly… Over the next five to 10 years, we will slowly add rough areas with native grasses that will complement the overall look and feel of the course.”
Flood mitigation is also a priority, with Melbourne Water consulted on enlarging the wetlands to reduce disruption to the 27 holes during minor flood events.
Eastern’s vision is to be the pre-eminent golf club in Melbourne’s east and from a golf-course standpoint, the facilities are all in place to achieve that goal. With the game booming in greater Melbourne, Eastern is a club all golfers should be looking at as one to join before its inevitable rise.
THE DETAILS
Eastern Golf Club
Where: Victoria Rd, Yering VIC 3770
Phone: (03) 9739 0110
Web: easterngolfclub.com.au
