It’s a lot easier to get a pokie machine than get rid of one, George Catsi learned after he and a group of neighbours took over their local bowls club.
That was in 2007 and the Petersham Bowling Club, at more than 100 years old, was in a state of disrepair.
“The greens were in decay, brick work was coming down, the roof was leaking, the outdoor furniture was broken,” Catsi tells Guardian Australia. “In the bar we only had two beer taps and the lines were bad – you’d lose half a keg pouring the beers.”
The kitchen was also a problem, with leaks and failing equipment, and the new owners needed revenue fast. But the easiest road out was not the one they wanted to take.
Catsi says the club came with pokie machines, but like everything else they too were out of date. “Clubs NSW told us: ‘You can pay $20,000 for new ones, to subsidise the food and drink.’”
That’s when the penny dropped. “We were like, ah – so that’s the model. You want one section of our community to subsidise another. That’s not us,” he says. “So we turned them off. They were making me stressed.”
Australia is home to less than 0.5% of the world’s population but has one-fifth of its pokies, according to a story in the Washington Post. The Age recently reported that Victorians have lost more than $66bn on these machines in the past 30 years.
Without pokies, the Petersham Bowling Club would become an outlier among community clubs – but it could also be a potential model for an alternative. “We had people travelling quite a distance just to support us for having no machines,” Catsi remembers.
These days the club is a different beast altogether, more like a sprawling Petersham sharehouse fuelled by craft beer. There are festive lights, a reading nook with couches, a recently renovated bar by the pool table and a kitchen serving modern pub grub.
The walls are still plastered with photos of the club’s history, a portrait of the Queen and an honour roll of club members who fought in both world wars. There are also a couple of band rooms, and plenty of tables outside by the green.
On 30 July the club will celebrate its 125th anniversary and “15 years of independence, since the community took it over”, Catsi says. But it hasn’t been smooth sailing.
The takeover
Before the community takeover of 2007, Petersham was typical of many Australian bowling clubs. An old guard of bowlers had been running it for decades, but its membership was in decline and ageing. Competitive bowlers were leaving for greener pastures and the club was losing money.
Meanwhile the suburb around it was becoming younger and richer, with new residents keen to engage with their neighbourhood. But Catsi says the bowls club felt unwelcoming, like a private members club.
Gentrification had raised the value of the land. To solve its money woes, the club considered selling the venue to developers to be knocked down and turned into townhouses. This proposal was knocked back and in 2006 another option was floated: to lease a portion of the land to a childcare centre for 99 years.
That’s when locals started to organise. New members joined the club in order to defeat both applications and keep the entire venue as a community asset. “We saw the potential to destroy something,” says Catsi, an academic and comic who lived on the same street as the Petersham bowlo after moving to the suburb in 2001.
The tactic paid off. In 2006, the new members voted to defeat the motion to lease the land, and the original board resigned en masse. A new board was installed, comprised of local residents and with Catsi elected as president.
The makeover
Catso and his neighbours suddenly found themselves trying to run a business that was failing fast.
“We were handed the keys to the bowling club and they said – good luck,” Catsi says. “None of us had bowled before – and none of us had a hospo background.”
The first seven years were tricky. They went through six different food operators, the committee were operating on a $30,000 overdraft, and the club needed urgent repairs.
But there were exciting things too. As music venues around Sydney were closing, the Petersham Bowling Club started two band rooms – one where the pokies used to sit – and didn’t take a cut of the door. The club soon became a fixture not only for young bands but names like Tim Freedman and Mental as Anything.
Families were also encouraged to visit. “They say bowling greens are sacred ground, and we wanted people to walk on the sacred ground – so we let kids walk on it.”
Old friends return
These days the club’s top green functions as a park with a bar attached, with the bottom green saved for bowling. Catsi says keeping the bowling was important.
When the new board took over, a group of older Italian men got in touch, saying they had once used the club but drifted away because of disagreements with the previous board. “The bocce boys called and said we want to come home,” Catsi says.
The club now serves as a community hub that includes a tool library as well as a regular library. It has hosted medieval events, a spring fair and Christmas and Halloween parties. “When Halloween started to kick off around Petersham, we made the bowlo the afterparty. You would come here and there would be 300 people; the staff would dress up – it would be mayhem,” Catsi says.
Before Covid, the club was turning profits in the six figures. It took a big dent during lockdowns – staff were not eligible for jobkeeper – but Catsi is optimistic it will bounce back quickly.
The club will celebrate its 125th birthday with a “fancy, formal or flamboyant” ball, with $145 tickets that cover drinks, canapés, entertainment and “a cake in the shape of lawn bowls”, Catsi says. “We’re still here – that’s the celebration,” he says. “It’s a fantastic survival and rejuvenation story.
“We’ve lost so many bowling clubs because they haven’t been able to transition and adapt to changing demographics, social and otherwise.
“They either go completely under or they merge with other clubs who either just shut it down and take the land [to sell to developers], or turn it into some pokie/sports bar outpost.”
Catsi says the kind of path taken by Petersham Bowling Club can instead have a “profound impact on the community”.
“But it’s hard to do. You can’t fabricate it. You have to create it, you have to facilitate it. You have to be organic, and then you have to get out of the way.”
Petersham Bowling Club’s 125th anniversary party takes place on 30 July. Tickets are available through Moshtix
