ARARAT Bowls Club has used recycled bowls to create a water feature to honour its founders.
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The club’s facility development subcommittee has spent six months to overcome the technical challenges in turning decades-old bowls into fountains.
Water now flows up pipes drilled through stacks made up of a total of 96 bowls.
The water then flows down the contours of the bowls to a collection trough at the bottom of the feature.
Subcommittee chair Bill Allgood said the club’s foundation committee formed in 1884 and some members’s descendants were still in the area, including from the Harricks family.
“Club member David Coone had an idea of the general concept,” Mr Allgood said.
“We had so many bowls accumulated over the years and it sounded like a good idea.”
The project was so unusual that the club had to search beyond Ararat to find a firm that could take on the work.
“Over a number of months Stawell engineer Darren Egan trialled things, different designs and concepts, and finally came up with the what we see here.”
Mr Allgood said they found sawdust in some of the bowls as some were up to 100 years old.
“When we get too many old bowls in storage, they would usually end up in the tip,” he said.
“Members pass on or they upgrade their bowls and often they leave them behind.”
As far as the club is aware, there’s no other water feature like the one now standing outside the Ararat club.
“We’ve had plenty of people comment that they want to copy the design or do something similar,” Mr Allgood said.
“To the best of our knowledge, there is nothing else like it. We can’t swear by that, but it’s our understanding.”
The feature has a plaque with the names of the founding committee members.
Subcommittee member Jim Dunn said the founders first met at a pub near the site of the present-day greens.
Mr Allgood said the water feature had become a big topic of conversation with teams visiting Ararat for competitions.