Official Opening

The history of the Club began in the early 1960’s with the land becoming available after a swap of land from Waterfalls Road for the current Tony Clarke reserve was negotiated.

Areas were allocated for football, tennis, cricket and lawn bowls. Voluntary work by the Scott brothers and Dave Daly conducted over regular weekend working bees started the development of the bowls area. A meeting held in 1971 determined that work should start in earnest with the council allocating $5000 for the construction. Ron and Charley Scott local contractors used often by the Shire used their earth moving equipment to work on the drainage, the ditches and a chain link fence around the site. Dave Daly, Arthur Quaife and Fred Douthie worked tirelessly on the project whilst Graeme Quaife remembers visiting Hardies in Williamstown to pick up the asbestos cement ditches and Dave Humphyris recalls sieving soil through wire bed bases on weekends.

The club boasted 60 members at this time without a green to play on!

In 1982 after a hiatus of some seven to eight years due to squabbling in the Reserve Management Committee a meeting was held to resurrect the idea of the Bowling Club a large crowd were in attendance and it was decided then to offer debentures to enable the work to continue. RSL’s Clarrie Williams was the first Club President and Hayden Hiddle the first secretary.

Initial planning was halted when the Ash Wednesday fires destroyed much of the Macedon area on February 16th 1983. It took over a year to re-commence the project and during that time the Drop in Centre that had been set up at Tony Clarke Reserve became available for the Club to move to it’s current site but not until the Club agreed to brick the building with the verandah concreted and toilet and kitchen facilities upgraded. The overall cost to the Club was estimated to be $29,000 which at the time was a lot of money for the members to raise.

Macedon Lions and the RSL were generous in their time to get the green up to scratch but gradually they departed so the Bowling Club was required to raise it’s on funding for the establishment of the club. Max and Mary Anderson ran a street stall out the front of the local supermarket which raised monies whilst Bingo was called by Max and Dave Clements at the clubrooms. The Wanderers Pool Club also made the clubhouse home to assist in raising funds.

In July 1986 a mixed carpet bowls competition was commenced. The green outside was managed by Max Anderson and Les Hall and was Bent Grass. 

At the time of the 1985-86 season commencement only Max and Gordon Gherashe were experienced bowlers as the teams lined up.

The first Pennant team to play for Macedon was in Division Four of the CHBA in 1986-87. Promotion came rapidly as the club moved into Division three after winning the premiership.

In 2000 the club had raised $13,500 to have a Bendigo company Turf Hog to replace the Bent grass.

Premierships followed and in 2007-08 we won a Division Two premiership after defeating the highly fancied Melton side and advanced to Division One-a steep learning curve it was for all! Our most memorable win during that time was beating the highly credentialed Kyneton Golf at home. Golf were a powerhouse at the time in Division One and regularly won premierships, the win by Macedon certainly made them sit up and pay attention that afternoon.