ROSALEEN MACBRAYNE meets a couple who want to share their labour of love near Tauranga.
When David and Cloie Blackley returned from overseas to their farm, high in the rolling Papamoa hills near Tauranga, they faced a problem: what to do with the overgrown kiwifruit orchard?
They decided to build a golf course.
The tough kiwifruit vines which had run wild in their absence were cleared from a sixth of the 404ha farm the Blackleys have owned for 43 years to make way for the private course.
They also felled an old pine forest - which helped finance the course - exposing "far better views than we thought we had."
Over the past two years, the couple have lovingly converted the land into a picture-perfect nine-hole golf course with views stretching to White Island and the East Coast, over Tauranga Harbour and out to the Coromandel.
Twice around, the course is 5028 metres, with a par of 71. Now the greens are ready for play and the Blackleys want to share their Summerhill Golf Park with others - although visitors are asked to telephone before arriving.
There is a donation box instead of green fees; the owners want to encourage more young people to take up golf.
Now in his 70s, David Blackley - farmer, developer, pilot, sailor and adventurer - grew up near Wellington's Heretaunga Golf Course, where his father was club president and his mother captain.
"I was forced into playing at an early stage, against my wishes. You don't want to do what your parents do," he says.
But lasting memories of the friendly atmosphere and great community spirit have prompted Mr Blackley to recreate something similar on his land.
The golf course is part of a broader plan for a recreational farm and forest park, with walkways, cycle tracks and picnic areas, which the couple want to one day give to the district.
Rather than carve up one of the largest blocks of undeveloped real estate between Te Puke and Tauranga, they want to retain a greenbelt and make it available for people to enjoy.
Constructing the golf course was a hard slog, but the Blackleys persisted.
They took advice from other golfers and course designers, "sifted it" and carried on realising David Blackley's own vision.
Mrs Blackley has planted thousands of trees and shrubs - 30 varieties of them - mostly hardy natives.
"There is still a lot to be done. I think it's endless," says Mrs Blackley, without complaint.
Adds her husband: "It's slave labour."
Firmly in their minds, though, is the desire for a quieter Bay of Plenty course where golfers need not feel hassled by queues.
The new fairways have self-descriptive names such as Fish Pond, Steep Climb, Dog's Leg, Roly-Poly and High Tension (this one has power lines overhead). One green runs through a big old chestnut tree orchard.
"It's a good caper for golfers to bring along a bag and gather some [chestnuts] to take home," suggests Mr Blackley.
With the neighbouring Otawa Bush Reserve as a backdrop, the 500m ninth green will look down on a golf clubhouse with a turf roof marrying it to the green landscape.
Construction has started on the distinctive two-storey stone-and-adobe building which will also be a bed-and-breakfast farmstay when someone is found to run it.
The Blackleys have more ideas, including an area for outdoor sculpture.
Meanwhile, they still farm sheep and cattle, and about half their extensive property is in commercial forest.
Surveying their golfing paradise from "on top of the world," with stunning ocean and rural scenery spread below, Mr Blackley muses: "It will be nice, when I start pushing around in my wheelchair, to feel this is what I have achieved. This is my swan-song."
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