If you’ve been to Akaroa on Canterbury’s Banks Peninsula, more than likely you’ve passed through Tai Tapu.

It’s one of the many historic settlements on the road from Christchurch to Akaroa : Halswell, Motukarara, Little River and Duvauchelle.  These settlements drip with pioneering sweat … of days when railways rather than roads were the veins of New Zealand … and when sheep rather than dairy cows ruled the economy.

Turn off at the beautiful red-stoned St Paul’s Church in the Tat Tapu township, and a kilometre or so down the road you’ll find the local first world war memorial, built from same red volcanic rock.  It’s the entrance to the Tai Tapu Domain … a tree-perimetered greenspace (although more brownspace in Canterbury’s dry summers) that is home to every sport the locals enjoy : rugby, tennis and netball.  It’s also home to the single-green Tai Tapu Bowling Club.

“We’re a small club (25 full-playing members) with mostly older members,” says Club Secretary and former public sector mover and shaker, Marty Braithwaite, “But we’re determined to be around tomorrow, and we’re making it our goal to find new ways to attract new members … and new younger members.”

The club’s being helped by the changing demographics of Canterbury.  An increasing number of people are choosing the likes of Tai Tapu to live … and commute to work in Christchurch.  Tai Tapu is still a lifestyle outlier … but then so were satellite towns like Halswell, Rolleston and Belfast before they became suburbs in the amorphous mass that is Christchurch.

“It’s still hard to get those people involved in bowls,” says Club President Tim Pavey. “They’re busy with their lives, their work, their families … and they don’t have the time for bowls that our older members have.  And most significantly, they have much fewer opportunities to play during the week.  We have to fit in with them, rather than them fitting with us.”

Again, like many other bowling clubs, one of the strategies to get new (and younger) players involved is twilight bowls.

“We have only run a couple of twilight bowls sessions so far this season,” says Marty. “And had about 25+ locals playing three-bowl triples.  But the intention is to get a lot more serious about this, and to look at running four to six-week windows before and after Christmas.”

“We’ve been a little distracted by hosting external Christmas functions … we’ve had more than 10 of them so far this year, and it means that many of our 25 members have had to repeatedly take turns at being on deck.  We don’t make a lot of money … the council limits us to 30 people in the clubrooms ,, but we see these occasions more as an entrée for the attendees to become interested in bowls, and the bowling club.”

Tai Tapu has fairly new clubrooms.  It’s a council-owned and operated multi-sports complex which was one of the many rebuilds after the 2011 Christchurch earthquake.

“We have our own dedicated space,” says Marty.  “But the council can co-opt the space for functions.  They also use it for council meetings.  If we want to use more space in the complex, say if we have a big tournament on, we have to hire it like anyone else.”

“It works well though.”

“Council’s given us permission to build a large pergola over the outdoor seating area,  So that will give us great indoor-outdoor flow through the large sliding door, effectively doubling our hospitality and spectator area.”

That’s something they couldn’t have enjoyed with their old pre-earthquake clubrooms, which were a DIY effort cobbled together by the club members in pre-resource consent, pre-building consent days.  The new clubrooms are one of the fortunate aspects of the earthquake, which surprisingly affected the club so far out in the southwest away from the epicentre.

“We had a lot of liquefaction on the green,” recalls Club Life Member, Heather Murdoch, who was around at the time, although a member down the road at the now-closed Waihora Bowling Club at Motukarara. “In one corner, the green slumped 10 inches,”

You wouldn’t know it today.  And the only nuisances the greenkeeper has to contend with are the leaves and resultant moss from the surrounding trees,

It’s a green that’s producing competitive bowlers.

‘Tai Tapu recently won the Ellesmere Cup.” says Heather. “And we’re back in the town inter-club for the first time in 15 years.”

One of the tournaments they have yet to master though is the annual challenge between the Tai Tapu Bowling Club and the Akaroa Bowling Club.

“They’re the holders of the Suckling Cup at the moment,” says Heather of the alternately-hosted one-day triples challenge.  “But we’re determined to get it back!”

You’d have to bet on them doing the business!