Gardiners Run Golf Course

Overview: At Lilydale, Gardiners Run offers a par-72 round across 18 holes at Lilydale on Melbourne’s eastern edge. The layout occupies a former quarry site and uses the surrounding hills, native vegetation and broad valleys to create a varied woodland round. Pacific Coast Design’s routing gives the property room to breathe, with long views on some holes and more enclosed approaches elsewhere. At 6,301 metres from the back tees, it offers a substantial test without losing the visitor-friendly character expected of a public Melbourne course.

History: The course was developed as part of the relocation and transformation of the old Chirnside Country Club property. The quarry landscape required substantial shaping before it could become golf ground, and the finished course is a good example of rehabilitation through a large-scale public golf project. The club’s current course tour retains that story in the way holes move between open ground and native corridors.

Did You Know? Gardiners Run’s name belongs to a course built on land with an industrial past. The old quarry is not just a historical footnote: changes in elevation and the bold banks around several holes are direct reminders that the designers were working with a heavily altered site.