Update on Drilling for Irrigation Water.

Hello Members

I am sure that you are wondering why there has been no update on recent drilling developments in our search for irrigation water.

That has been because we have been evaluating drilling information and considering our next steps.

The news is good but not great. In short, we have found some water on hole 13 but not as much as we need.

McMillan’s drilled the well quite quickly two weeks ago. At 17 metres deep they hit a gravel seam containing some flowing water, but beyond that, to 45 metres they found no water.

They back-filled the hole to 20m deep and then spent considerable time in trying to open up the cavity at 17metres to try to “entice” more water.

They test pumped good clean water over several days before concluding that the sustainable pumping rate was only 1 litre per second. We had hoped for at least 5 litres per second.

It is thought probable, but is not 100% certain, that the bore recharge rate will sustain this pumping rate in the middle of summer. That has to be checked.

To give this perspective, 1l/sec, if pumped for a full 24 hours into several storage tanks, could theoretically yield us 86 cubic metres of water a day for irrigation.

One watering cycle of the tees and greens uses approx 80m3 per day, but in peak summer we sometimes need a double rotation (that happened 9 times last year but was needed much more frequently than that in prior years).

Clearly some water is better than no water, and we have few other options, so we asked McMillans to cap the well ready for our use.

At last night’s committee meeting we considered the drillers recommendations and our future options. Note that we are still awaiting McMillan’s final report.

The Committee agreed to wait until Feb or March next year to re-test the summer flows.

We also agreed to further discuss with McMillans the merits, and cost, of them using a different “Cable Percussion” method to try and enhance the water flow.  In my layman’s language this equipment acts like a plunger using a constant push and pull of water to unlock the “pores” and create a larger cavity. McMillans believe this will work.

We will continue to work with ECAN on any other options to find more water.

We will start the process to engage an engineering consultant to advise us on many issues such as pumps, tanks, electricity, soil tests, water tests, etc and to process our consent application. Hopefully that application can be lodged in April.

Cost of the drilling so far will exceed $30k. This is allowed for in our 2025-6 budget.

As we say, some water is better than none so this is at least a promising breakthrough. Not time to break open the champagne just yet, but maybe a quiet beer!!!

Our thanks to all who have helped in this process to date  - especially David, Steve, Neil, Tony Hawker and Brian Mustchin.

On other matters:

The course looks amazing and is playing incredibly well. Spring sure is a great time to play golf.

Thanks to all who helped with the clean up after the storm. We believe we dodged a bullet by not incurring greater damage to the course and buildings.

Congratulations to Tony Hawker on winning the shootout and Brent Berry who finished runner up. Thanks to Gibby for organising another great event and to Gibby and Liz for their generous sponsorship.

Good golfing everyone.

Best wishes
Graham on behalf of the Committee

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