Through the mid-1920s, golf was beginning to boom in popularity with new courses being built and some of the biggest names in the history of the game attracting superstar recognition for their feats. Golf fans had plenty to cheer about in 1927 – American Bobby Jones headed home across the Atlantic with his second successive British Open title and Walter Hagen collected his fourth consecutive US PGA Championship.

Closer to home, new layouts on the Melbourne Sandbelt were taking shape and the demand for golf courses in regional Australia was keeping a small band of local course designers busy. At Yarrawonga, on the banks of the beautiful Murray River, a group of local golfers were planning a move of their own.

Led by Thomas Baillie, the group had its sights set on 110 acres of dairy farm land just across the river into New South Wales. At a cost of eight pounds per acre, the land was purchased and Yarrawonga had a nine-hole course within a year. Since 1886, the golfers of Yarrawonga had graduated from a three-hole layout in the centre of town, to a nine-hole course laid out around the racecourse to a dairy farm at Mulwala.

In the 86 years since moving to Mulwala, the Yarrawonga & Mulwala Golf Club Resort has grown to become the largest public access golf resort in Australia. A first-class clubhouse now stands where the dairy farm homestead once presided over the paddocks.

Having started as nine holes on the present site, the course was extended to 18 holes over the following two decades and it has been growing ever since.

In 1957, course architect Sam Berriman, who created well-regarded layouts like Horsham and Keysborough, was commissioned to design a new 18-hole layout. Nearly 25 years later, designers Peter Thomson and Mike Wolveridge added another nine before completing a further 18 holes five years later. Today, Yarrawonga & Mulwala has 45 holes – the Lake and Murray courses as well as a shorter nine-hole layout known as the Executive course. Both 18-hole layouts are well entrenched in the Golf Australia ranking of the Top-100 Public Access Courses in Australia.