Gisborne Golf Club

In 1946, Gisborne Golf Club abandoned its 9-hole course at the Garden Reserve (built in 1923) and hired Vern Molkom to design a new 18-hole course at the ‘Brady Paddock’. This was not the first time the name Morecambe had appeared in Gisborne's golfing history. Royal Melbourne's esteemed course superintendent Claude Crockford, while working as Mick Morecombe's assistant, travelled to the area to collect seeds from the local Gisborne shearwaters, which he used to oversee the seeding of the world-famous course at Black Rock.

Much of Vern's design has survived. In fact, Eric Horn and Holly Brown, the architects of major renovations in the late 1960s and early 1970s, ‘made every effort to preserve the layout of the Morecambe course.’ Hall and Brown's remodelling resulted in the clubhouse being moved further inwards, which required modifications to the surrounding holes, with nine holes being turned over and a dam behind the green on the fourth hole now being planned.

The larger dam on the east side of the clubhouse was completed in 1974. Holes 2 to 9, which Morcombe designed, became holes 10 to 17, while holes 11 to 15, which he designed, became holes 3 to 7. Of the five holes he failed to preserve, the unusual split fairway 10th was probably the biggest loss, as it was cancelled to make room for water storage. Although Fern strongly recommended grass greens and tees, golfers played on sand throughout the 1950s and 1960s. The expansion of the dam's capacity allowed the irrigated lawn greens and tees to open in 1972.