This month we played our annual memorial game, ‘Dougie’s Day’, at the south Grafton course. This day honours our late friend Doug Purtill. Doug was a long-time member of our club and made everyone he met the better for it. A kind, generous man who loved life with a passion, he is sorely missed by us all.

To reflect his colourful nature, we start the day with everyone playing with a coloured ball. Greens, pinks, yellows, reds and blues were flying left right and centre around the course. Another favourite of Dougs was his cut down putter. The thing is like 3 foot long at the most. So, a requirement of the game is that everyone has to use the putter on the final hole. Now while this rule is a bit of fun to remember our mate, this year it became a deciding factor in the results. The first group… who had the putter to leave out for the following groups: forgot to use it. 

This disqualified them from the event, which three of the group were neither here nor there about. The other member however, it was revealed at presentations, would have won the day! So sad.

The results are as follows.

The winner of the ‘Dougie’ trophy for 2023 was Isaiah Quelch; 2nd went to “the new guy”, Durand Hartz; 3rd was Kate Quelch. (These Quelches are taking over the place).

Nearest to the pins went to Durand Hartz and John Pepper.

Now ‘Brad the Goose’ had spent the last month living the retired life with Revee and was looking forward to a change of pace. Unfortunately, Brad will be again keeping residence at the West’s abode as Donna claims the honour this month.

Next month is our annual trip away, and this year we will be heading to Urunga and Sawtell. Details and times will be distributed in the coming weeks.

Pep