To understand the background to the establishment and development of golf in Queensland, it is necessary to consider the expansion of the game globally from its beginnings in Scotland over four hundred years ago.

For the first several centuries, golf was played with wooden clubs and "feathery" balls.  The featheries were made of a wetted leather covering stuffed with wet, boiled goose feathers.   As they dried, the leather shrank and the feathers expanded, thus producing a hard ball.  They were expensive, as an expert could produce no more than four a day and they cost as much as a club.  Wet weather (when the balls became soggy and disintegrated rapidly), poor play (they were easily cut) and bad ground all took their toll.

The gutty (or guttie) ball was developed in the late 1840s/early 1850s.  It was made of gutta-percha, a tough greyish-black plastic substance obtained from the latex of various Malayan trees.  Much cheaper than the feathery, the gutty performed better and could be painted, patterned and remoulded if knocked out of shape.

The gutty was very hard compared to the feathery and this brought about changes in the composition of the clubs which, until then, had been mainly wooden-headed.  Leather, and later metal, faces were inserted into the wooden clubs to cushion the effects of the harder ball.  The new ball was well suited to iron clubs which then grew in number and popularity by giving the player a range of shots not previously possible.

Perhaps most importantly, the introduction of the gutty ball helped to make the game affordable to a greater segment of the population.

The British Victorian era saw a prolonged period of peace coupled with enormous colonial development. This brought increased prosperity to Great Britain and the growth of the middle classes. Englishmen fell under the spell of golf, a game which could be played by anyone of any standard and of any age. More of the populace now had the time and the money to participate in the new fashionable sport. It was a social game, gave an opportunity for making friends and provided healthy, if not too strenuous exercise.

The above factors resulted in a rapid expansion of new golf courses throughout the British Isles during the second half of the 19th Century.

The Scots and the English, migrating to all parts of the Empire (and elsewhere including America), took their clubs and the game with them.

In Australia, the first known playing of the game took place in the 1820s when Alexander Reid played at "Ratho", near Bothwell in southern Tasmania. This was over thirty years after the first white settlement of Australia in January 1788.

"Ratho" is believed to be the oldest golf course in the Southern Hemisphere and is still a privately owned course with fences around the greens and fairways kept short by grazing sheep.

There are accounts of golf games in the Flagstaff Gardens in Melbourne in 1847, near Concord in Sydney in 1855 and in Adelaide in 1869.   Some attempts were made to form golf clubs in the southern States during this time, but none survived for long.

The Australian Golf Club, Sydney, was formed in March 1882 but ceased playing in 1888.  It reformed in 1895 and claims a continuous history as its bank account was left incat during the recess.

Royal Melbourne Golf Club was founded in May 1891 and is the oldest Australian club with a continuous playing history.  Organised golf had finally been established in Australia some one hundred years after Captain Phillip landed at Sydney Cove.

This may seem unduly delayed, as the Royal Calcutta Golf Cub (the oldest in the world outside Britain) was founded in 1829 and the Otago Golf Club in Dunedin, New Zealand, dates from 1871 and is the oldest in the southern hemisphere.  The first club in the United States, the St Andrews Golf Club of Yonkers, New York, began in 1888.

The first white settlement in Queensland was the convict establishment at Brisbane in 1824, thirty six years after the founding of Sydney.  However, it was not until 1842 that the Moreton Bay district was opened to free settlement, although squatters had taken up holdings on the Darling Downs and elsewhere by overlanding from the south.

The traditionally accepted first games of golf in the State were played by the two Scottish brothers, Frank and Alexander Ivory.  They are said to have laid out a few holes on their Eidsvold Station sometime during the 1880s.  However, there is also a reference to golf being played at Stanthorpe, possibly during the mid-1870s.

Adherents of the sport must have been performing and/or practising privately over the following years as, when the first golf clubs were formed, clubs and balls were readily produced.  It is most unlikely that any stores in Queensland at that time carried stocks of such items.  In fact, early club minutes record the direct purchases of balls from England.  The ease with which initial memberships were gathered indicates there were scattered golfing fanatics aware of a mutual interest in the game but who, until the 1890s, did nothing to place the game on a formal basis.

These men had brought their skills and equipment from "the Old Country".  They were now ready to set in place the beginnings of organised golf in the northern colony.

These foundations have grown to where there are (as at 31st December 2003) 251 affilated golf clubs with 63,063 registered men golfers and approx. 15,000 lady golfers in the State.  These figures do not include the many others who belong only to social golf clubs or those who enjoy the occasional game on a public or resort course.