Adelaide Bowling Club first in South Australia 1897 with social status; extension of Kintore Avenue later takes site

A playing session in about 1919 at Adelaide Bowing Club on its site that later became the northern section of Kintore Avenue, Adelaide, where it joins Victoria Drive.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia

Adelaide Bowling Club, founded in 1897, was South Australia’s oldest, with a socially prominent membership.

After a discussion at Prince Albert Hotel, a public meeting was called by Henry Dench and chaired by the Register newspaper editor J.H. Finlayson. South Australian governor T. Fowell Buxton accepted the position of patron. Lavington Bonython, James Marshall, R. Kyffin Thomas, W. H. R. Porter, F. W. Thomas, F. Coombs, B. H. Pascoe, W. Thyer, F. W. Good, W. D. Reed, V. Lawrence, H. A. Grainger, F. A. Crump, J. H. Finlayson, and E. Eglinton were among the charter members, with Edwin T. Smith, Robert Barr Smith, William Gilbert and A.H. Grainger also involved.

The club's first green was on a plot 300 by 95 yards behind government house on North Terrace, Adelaide. Its location was later in the way of Adelaide city council’s plan to extend Kintore Avenue through to Victoria Drive. For this reason, the club was moved in 1958 to its present location within Rymill Park in the eastern parklands, with the entrance off Dequetteville Terrace.

South Park Bowling Club off Peacock Road was the second bowling club on the Adelaide city parklands when it took up its one-acre site, officially opened in early 1908.

The Royal South Australian Bowling Association for men’s bowls started in 1902 and South Australian Women’s Bowling Association formed in 1930. The SA Bowler magazine reported on a 1934 carnival where  “in the evening probably the greatest function of its kind took place at South Park Green. This was the assembly of bowlers and ladies termed a ‘get-together’ when between 3000 and 4000 attended. It is on record that over 2000 were served supper within one hour.”

In 2003, in an historic meeting, the men’s and women’s bowls organisations merged to form Bowls SA. This was a first for lawn bowls in Australia. Bowls SA became one of the larger not-for-profit organisations in the state, with 216 clubs in the metropolitan and country areas and more than 17,000 registered members.