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Whenever I visit my local bowling club in Moorefield, I order the rainbow beef and worry it may be my last chance to enjoy such a meal. Partly because the levels of MSG trigger such severe reflux that it feels fatal, but also because it’s hard not to suspect the bowling club is on borrowed time.
The humble bowlo has long held a special place in our hearts, a diamond in the rough of suburbia. To set foot in a bowlo is to revisit the past, a time when the beers were cheap, the clientele friendly, and the land open for public use.
Only at the bowling club are you on a first-name basis with the elderly man who has been drinking since 11am. Only at the bowling club can you get decent change from a tenner when you order a schooner. Only at the bowling club do hot chips taste the same as Hokkien noodles because the cooking oil hasn’t been changed since 1996.
Despite the bowling club representing everything we claim to cherish – community, sport, thriftiness – they are increasingly at risk of being ruined by everything we actually value: overregulation, rules and quiet neighbourhoods for the wealthy. Credit: Marija Ercegovac
And yet, despite the bowling club representing everything we claim to cherish – community, sport, thriftiness – they are increasingly at risk of being ruined by everything we actually value: over-regulation, rules and quiet neighbourhoods for the wealthy.
To prove my point, you only need to rewind a few days through the news cycle to arrive at the most Sydney story of all time. Earlier this week, Warringah Bowls Club in Mosman received a formal warning from the liquor watchdog after complaints from neighbours regarding noise from trivia nights and a children’s jumping castle.
According to the warning, neighbours were specifically upset that they could hear live music, people screaming and “cheering”, children running on the greens, and occasionally, some residents were able to understand the trivia questions.
The thought of a Mosman resident being furious about noise while also desperately trying to remember which year Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You out of My Head went to number one is hilarious, but highlights the broader issue.
We love the idea of the suburban bowlo, a charming throwback to a simpler era. But good vibes don’t pay the rent, which explains why clubs have found themselves in a steep decline.
Research from a 2022 study by the UNSW Sydney found the city has lost nearly half its bowlos in the past 40 years, with no new clubs established in the 15 years to 2020. In total, the number of clubs in Sydney decreased from 210 in 1980 to 128 in 2022.
The rate at which they disappear also increased, with 51 club closures in the past decade alone. Many have suffered an all too familiar fate in this city: being sold off to developers for millions of dollars. Prime real estate and generous land size make ailing clubs an easy target for residential rezoning.
Ten-storey residential towers planned: The Waverley Bowling Club will be turned into a new development.Credit: Peter Rae
Others like Waverley in the East, Sydney’s second-oldest bowling club, and Caringbah in the Sutherland Shire have taken a hybrid approach.
They sell off the land in exchange for the promise of staying alive, basically becoming a bowling club hidden among a crowd of high-rise apartments.
Across the city, smaller clubs have looked to repurpose and meet the needs of a changing community.
The Greens at North Sydney overhauled its menu and improved its function centre, Petersham banished the pokies and became a family-friendly live music venue; Marrickville zeroed in on the hipsters, and Leichhardt sacrificed one of the bowling greens to build an outdoor bar serving local beers.
Petersham Bowling Club has ensured its survival by becoming family friendly and embracing live music.
Those who remain as true bowlos have embraced a Darwinian fight for survival: adapt or die. Enter Warringah with its boisterous trivia and the grating sound of children having fun.
Only in a city obsessed with rules and regulations would the same measures introduced to ensure a club’s survival might also be what ends them. We told bowling clubs what they had to do to earn our patronage, then we punished them for it.
Why not try live music? No music outside. What about hosting functions? Functions are banned. Could we do trivia? OK, but do it quietly.
This week’s news is a well-needed reminder that we should be grateful for the bowlos we still have and acknowledge how many we’ve lost. Sydney is not at risk of having nowhere to go for a drink and dinner; you can’t walk 10 metres without stumbling into a Merivale venue.
But the bowlo isn’t just another venue. It’s a reflection of who we have been, and hopefully, if they stick around, a sign of who we can still become.
Because if we get rid of the kids, the beers, the “cheering”, and the jumping castles, places like Warringah will soon become a little too quiet and empty, and by then, it will be too late.
Find more of the author’s work here. Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Instagram at @thomasalexandermitchell and on Twitter @_thmitchell.
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