Thursday 8 May 2014 marked the 100th anniversary of the first meeting of the Queensland Golf Association, the original predecessor to Golf Queensland.
The inaugural meeting of the Queensland Golf Association was held on the 8 May 1914 at the office of W.F.R. Boyce at 63 Adelaide Street, Brisbane. Leonard Francis occupied the chair.
Clubs represented were Brisbane, Charters Towers, Cordalba, Ipswich, Isis, North Queensland, Maryborough, Stanthorpe, Toowoomba and Warwick.
The first office bearers were E.H. Macartney (President), Hon. B. Fahey (Vice-President) and T.B. Hunter (Secretary). All these men were from The Brisbane Golf Club. Tommy Hunter (pictured) would continue as honorary secretary/treasurer for the next 26 years until retiring in August 1940. He also became the namesake to the Queensland Open trophy.
During the war, State Championships were abandoned, leaving the Queensland Golf Association with little or nothing to consider. However with the return to peace, the 1920’s saw the game expand in Queensland at a pace undreamed of during the previous three decades.
The rapid expansion of the sport, which had previously been restricted to the then middle and upper classes of society was now being taken up by a wider population.
100 years later, Golf Queensland is a vastly different place, with 11 full-time employees, 18 District Associations and over 230 clubs.
To celebrate the milestone, Golf Queensland and the State Library of Queensland (SLQ) will showcase a range of online media-based programs throughout May and include a digital golfing in Queensland exhibition in Flickr, an interactive digital experience of current and past golf clubs through Historypin, and an online presence to golf clubs in Wikipedia.
A key outcome for the project is for every member golf club to collect, digitise and describe its memorabilia for golfing generations to come.