The course & your visit
Penfield (The Gums): northern golf with a remarkable past
Penfield Golf Club now plays as The Gums GC Salisbury — the old domain redirects to the new site, which carries the former name in its footer. The venue sits at Edinburgh in the outer north, which the club puts about half an hour’s drive from the CBD, and calls itself the hub of golf in the northern suburbs. The course is nine holes with eighteen alternate tees playing to par 72, backed by a full-length range and a licensed clubhouse. Its history, rooted in a wartime ammunition factory, is unlike anything else in the batch.
Sources: The Gums — home · The Gums — course & pricing
Nine holes, eighteen ways to play them
The layout is a nine-holer stretched by alternate tees into an eighteen-hole round, which the club measures at 5,793 metres for members and 5,287 for ladies off the championship markers, all to par 72. Tree-lined kikuyu fairways and bent greens with placed bunkering make up the surfaces, and the site carries an individual page for each of the eighteen tee positions for golfers who like to preview.
Competition golf runs most days with plenty of social play alongside, under a full-year programme that includes an Annual Golf Week open to AGU-registered players. The club has fielded GolfSA pennant teams since its establishment — a competitive streak that runs through the whole history below.
Sources: The Gums — course & pricing · The Gums — home
Visiting
Visitors are taken every day within guide access times — all day Monday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday, and from set afternoon points on Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday — with bookings essential on Sundays and a recommendation to call ahead to confirm. Twilight play starts at 3pm in winter and 4:30pm in summer. The driving range, unlike the course, is open to visitors at all times.
The clubhouse is fully licensed with kitchen and barbecue facilities for hire, and hosts corporate days and team-building circuit golf alongside an on-course pro shop with on-site club repairs. Contact is (08) 8281 5210, and the address is 6-30 Woomera Avenue, Edinburgh.
Sources: The Gums — course & pricing · The Gums — home · The Gums — contact
The practice ground
The range is a 220-metre by 100-metre facility with eight targets and room for twelve players, set with mounds and flags at various distances. Alongside sit two practice areas, two chipping and pitching areas and a double putting green, covering driving, wedge play, chipping, bunker play and putting. PGA professional Brian Galvin handles tuition, and the range keeps daily opening hours across the week.
Sources: The Gums — the range
From ammunition factory to oasis
The club began in September 1959 as the Weapons Research Establishment Institute, born alongside the Penfield Ammunition Factory built for the Second World War effort. Early conditions were rudimentary: fairways marked by a single furrow plough line, greens levelled with sand and sump oil, and sheep brought in during the week to mow so members could play on weekends. The current clubhouse, Building 51, started life as derelict single men’s quarters divided into cabin rooms.
From the spring of 1960 an army of volunteers planted fairways and greens, converting what the history calls flat, treeless, sun-baked clay gibber plains into green — a volunteer spirit the club says lives on. The course officially opened on 9 April 1960 with 115 members, 33 players teeing up on the day, and Mrs R. Boswell — wife of the WRE director — striking the first ball. The 1970s to 1990s brought annual Pro-Ams and full fields; the golden anniversary in April 2010 drew the Governor to re-enact that first drive. In 2006 the club nearly moved when the government earmarked the land for housing, but the global financial crisis ended the plan.
Sources: The Gums — history
Researched from the published sources linked above.