As has been widely reported across national media outlets, communities along the NSW mid-North Coast have been smashed by heavy rain and flooding this week. A number of golf clubs and sports turf facilities have been severely impacted by the deluge, among them Nambucca Heads Island Golf Club (pictured above and below). For course superintendent Greg Jager it is his fourth major flood in five years since taking over as superintendent after making the move south from RACV Royal Pines on the Gold Coast.

“The course started going under on Wednesday morning and at this stage it looks like it’s going to be very similar to the 2021 flood when the course was covered in silt,” reports Jager. “We still can’t get onto the course so at the moment we are just making assessments using drone footage. It looks like five or six greens are under, but thankfully the shed has stayed dry.

“Prior to the heavy downpours this week, for the month of May we’d had 140mm, so the ground was already at capacity. In the last four days we’ve had a total of 380mm which takes us to 520mm for the month. We really didn’t do a lot of prep as going on all the reports we were thinking it was mainly going to affect south of us. We managed to remove flags and tee markers but that was really it.” 

Sadly, Nambucca is no stranger to flooding due to its unique location. As the name suggests, Nambucca resides on an island (Stuart Island) which is accessed by a causeway from the main Nambucca township. The Nambucca River flows either side of the island with the course sitting just one metre above river level. The 2021 flood that Jager alludes to was one of the worst on record and came just a few months after he started in the role. Over an eight-day period in mid-March that year, Nambucca recorded a staggering 1080mm of rain, 350mm of that coming in one day, with the flood leaving widespread silt deposits nearly half a foot deep.

It took more than a month for the course to reopen, with the club receiving support from fellow golf clubs in the region, among them members of the crew at Coffs Harbour Golf Club. Matt Duff, the current day superintendent at Coffs Harbour, has again offered Jager and the club their services to help with the clean up once the water recedes.

Coffs Harbour also copped its fair share of rain this week as the photos below show, continuing a string of severe weather which started back when ex-tropical cyclone Alfred hit southeast Queensland and northern NSW at the start of March. Duff has recorded in excess of 1250mm of rain since the start of March, which included nearly 430mm in a nine-day period in the lead up to hosting the Australian Ladies Classic in mid-March.

“It’s been so wet and it hasn’t stopped,” says Duff. “We had 540mm for March, 300mm for April and are over 400mm for May so far. Most of the water just runs off because the ground is so waterlogged. We definitely dodged a bullet compared to clubs like Nambucca, Sawtell, Urunga, Macksville and other clubs further south.” 

Mark Spraggs, superintendent of the Tuncurry course at Forster-Tuncurry Golf Club, has registered more than half a metre of rain this week which has put sections of the course under water as the photo below shows. Spraggs’ former course, Club Taree about 30 minutes north, is also expected to be badly impacted after the Manning River experienced its worst flooding in almost 100 years. The Cut attempted to contact superintendent Paul Eggins but did not hear back from him prior to this edition being sent out. The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) weather station at Taree Airport, which is about 7km east of the golf course, has recorded 604mm over the past four days.

Steve Brennan at Port Macquarie Golf Club has notched over 665mm for the month of May which has taken their year to date tally to 1625mm. Those figures are mirrored by Port Macquarie’s BOM weather station which has logged 725mm for the month of May, including 238.8mm on Tuesday and a total of 482.6mm across the past four days. The ASTMA wishes all clubs and crews the best as they begin the long clean-up.

Words: Brett Robinson. Photos: Nambucca Heads - Nambucca Heads Island GC Facebook/Matt Leese; Coffs Harbour - Matt Duff; Tuncurry - Mark Spraggs.