Central Otago is a great place to visit.

It’s a place where you can sample New Zealand as it used to be …. whether it be cycling along the veins of the former Otago railway … supping an ale at St Bathans’ Vulcan Hotel … or picking out a few provisions at Oturehua’s Gilchrists General Store.

It’s also a place where you can enjoy something a little different … from tossing down a stone at the Naseby curling rink … to picking a bag of greengages in the Teviot Valley … to lunching on a locals’ favourite : a Jimmy’s pie.

It’s a place where you’ll find Alexandra … the ‘capital’ of Central Otago.

Alexandra’s a special place for bowlers.  With a population of some 5,000+, it’s the smallest town in New Zealand with two bowling clubs.  And they’re two very strong bowling clubs: the Alexandra Bowling Club at Molyneux Park and ADC Bowls based out of the Alexandra District Club near the town centre.

“Although it’s been on the same site all its life,” says Club President Geoff Moore (pictured above left, with Trevor Rayner).  “The Alexandra District Club hasn’t always been the ‘Alexandra District Club’.  It started off purely as a bowling club in 1920s called the ‘Alexandra Bowling Club’.

“In the late 1990’s, the Alexandra Town & Country Club, the Alexandra Clyde RSA & RSA Social Club together with the RSA bowling club combined to develop the clubrooms much as they are today.  And the club became known as the RSA Bowling Club Alexandra … so not as to be confused with the two ‘Alexandra-prefixed’ clubs in town.”

“However, three years ago, we discussed why we weren’t attracting the number of younger members we wanted. So we repositioned ourselves as a cossie club,”

That repositioning came with a branding refresh.

“We changed our name to ‘ADC Bowls’.  And we changed our colours to something more distinctive … the Otago colours :  blue and gold.  It was a pretty easy choice … the blue of the Clutha River combined with the gold that is so synonymous with the history of goldmining in the area.”

“We also became the ‘Home of the Pioneers’ … and outfitted our representative bowlers with a new blue and gold ‘Pioneer’ strip.”

“It’s been very successful in achieving what we wanted … and the club has since gone from strength to strength.”

“We’ve now got 80 or so bowlers in the club,” says Club Committee member Trevor Rayner. “And maybe six or so members who can compete with the best at Centre and National level … with more coming on.”

That’s not surprising with the bowling programme they have in place …. There’s a major tournament held every month during the season.

“The tournament we’re particularly proud of is the Charity Tournament in February,” adds Trevor.  “This year we had 22 teams playing and with the sponsorship from Alexandra Family Medical, & the Alexandra District Club, and support from many local businesses we raised over $7,000 for the Dunstan Hospital.”

“Last year, we raised even more for the treatment of a young local girl afflicted with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia.  The bowlers, and other locals for that matter, were extremely generous … and continue to be generous year after year.”

The annual St Patrick’s Day tournament in March is just as popular … but for different reasons.

St Patrick’s Day is a big day at the club

“This year we had the support of two sponsors,” says Geoff. “C & R Insurance and the Wild Irishman Vineyard … who provided bottles of wine as tournament prizes.  Those prizes mightn’t sound a big deal, but the winners went away with Wild Irishman’s wine valued at over $100 a bottle.”

“A bottle can be a real keepsake … but not too long of course!”

“And in keeping with the occasion, we bought a few slabs of Guinness to top up the prizes.  It all goes down very well, in more ways than one!”

But probably the real success behind the Alexandra District Club is not so much the tournament programme … not even the Twilight bowls programme (it’s super-successful) … but the willingness of the members to volunteer for all the ‘clubkeeping’ that’s required around the place.

“It’s usually easy to get members to help with anything and everything,” says Geoff.  “Not only for the working bees, the topdressing, the painting & the weekly roster to cover things like mowing & strimming the edges and even the vacuuming and cleaning toilets inside!”

“That’s what makes this club strong.”

The annual cheque to the Dunstan Hospital goes down well