The course & your visit
The Vines: wine-region golf with a water story
The Vines Golf Club of Reynella sits at the gateway to Adelaide’s southern wine region, around half an hour south of the CBD by the club’s own figures, on an 18-hole course the club calls a testing par 71 for all ages and abilities. The fairways are Santa Ana couch, the greens bentgrass, and the setting is the story as much as the golf: native bush on three sides, century-old red gums, and wildlife from kangaroos to tawny frogmouths. Off the course, the bar and bistro run public hours and the clubhouse works hard as a function venue.
Sources: Vines — home · Vines — course
Golf among the gums
The course page pitches the golf as strategic rather than long: driver is far from automatic, shot-shaping is rewarded, and missed greens test chipping and imagination. Water features and mature specimen trees — including red gums around a century old — shape the holes, while nesting boxes have built the birdlife: Adelaide and Eastern rosellas, blue wrens, ducks and kookaburras, with koalas regulars and kangaroos often on the fairways. The club quotes Golf Australia editor Brendan James on the greens and ProjectGOLF calling the layout a southern-suburbs must-play.
The next stage is already scoped: designer Ryan van der Veen has advised on a multi-year course enhancement strategy, starting with replacing the irrigation system. For a club whose history is largely a water story — see below — beginning with the pipes is characteristically on-brand.
Sources: Vines — course
Marino 1925, Reynella 1964, water always
The club was established on 16 April 1925 as the nine-hole Marino Golf Club on a farm at Marino. In 1963 it bought land at Reynella for eighteen holes; the first competition followed on 20 June 1964 with the new clubhouse completed the same year. The site sits in what the club calls the birthplace of South Australia’s wine industry, which supplied the 1998 rename when the Marino name no longer matched the address.
Water dominates the middle chapters. A 40-megalitre dam and small bore couldn’t sustain the course, so the club built creek dams in the 1980s, a Panalatinga Creek stormwater pond with a 1.3-kilometre pipeline in 1994, and automatic irrigation — the platform for a full Santa Ana re-turfing from 1996 to 2002. A 1999 windfall of 100,000 cubic metres of soil reshaped slopes and valleys, and a ten-year, $600,000-plus programme culminating in 2009 — new 45-megalitre dam, bore recharge, reservoir-drain harvesting — finally secured the irrigation future, filling all five dams that August. Volunteers thread the whole story, hence the ‘friendly club’ tag.
Sources: Vines — history
Visiting
Public golfers register as public members on the site, then view timesheets and book. Corporate and social golf has its own programme, juniors and pennants run through the season, and the pro shop anchors the golf operation. The club is at 1 Pine Road, Woodcroft — the suburb name confusingly shared with neighbouring clubs — on (08) 8381 1822.
Sources: Vines — visitor bookings
Bistro and functions
The bistro serves breakfast on weekends, lunch Tuesday to Sunday and dinner Thursday and Friday — Saturdays go to functions and pop-ups — with espresso from trained baristas, a standing Melt menu, and a rotating Masters menu of chef’s dishes revealed on the day. Takeaway runs on some items and dietary needs are catered. Weddings and conferences use the spacious clubhouse with its course views and extensive parking, and a 2017 overhaul of kitchens, bars and seating keeps the hospitality side current.
Sources: Vines — bistro · Vines — history
Researched from the published sources linked above.