Mark,
I played a few times in the Riversdale Cup during the 1960s and early 1970s.
I clearly remember one Easter there when the Cup was being contested, when the course was a veritable bog and preferred lies were in operation.
The course is immeasurably better now than it was in those years past, but due to its soil composition which is brown clay, it will never be rated one of Melbourne's top courses.
In those days some outstanding amateurs won the tournament including Tony Gresham, John Lindsay and Harry Berwick.
Also some notables who went on the successful professional careers including, if I recall correctly, Ian Stanley, Mike Cahill and Noel Radcliffe.
The professional there for over thirty years was George Naismith, who as Mike Clayton has pointed out, both Thomson and Graham both served their "time" under George's tutelage.
George was a fixture at Riversdale, as he commenced his duties there as the clubs' professional around 1929 and worked there until the early 1970s.
As far as I can recollect Russell was an only child, although I was told some years ago by a person who knew the Russell family, that there was a younger sister who died at a young age from TB, and another sister who married into a wealthy Western District family. I have not followed up that information so I cannot verify the accuracy thereof.
Mawallok, I seem to recollect, as being a substantial property situated just off the Western Highway between the city of Ballarat and the town of Ararat in the Beaufort district. The land in the area is very fertile, producing various grains and fat sheep and cattle.
The Russell Family had a private golf course on the property at Mawallok so I was told, which Alex had designed at the age of 16 or thereabouts. From all accounts it was a very good golf course, but later it fell into disuse and the land reverted to grazing pasture.
Nearly all of the land in that area of Victoria was grabbed by the "squatocracy" during the the period 1850-1880.
As Aboriginal Land Rights and subsequent claims have only come about over the past 30 years or so, I doubt that there would have been any claims against the Mawallok property, particularly during the years of occupancy of the Russell family.
Squatters rights were enshrined into law during the 1880s, whereby those squatters who could prove that they had existed on the land for the previous 25 years were permitted to "buy" the land off the State Government of Victoria for a "peppercorn" rate.
Those who could not produce proof of occupancy, were given the option of purchasing the land at a rate struck by the Government's Surveyor-General, a rate that was described by a columnist in "The Argus" at the time as being exceedingly generous.
Immense wealth was generated in the Western District of Victoria with the passing of the Lands Act, and the Russell family were just one of the many beneficiaries of such largesse by the Victorian State Government.
However, it shouldn't have been too much of a surprise, as the mostly corrupt various state governments of Victoria during the latter part of 1800s and up to the 1940s, were stacked with members of the descendants of the original "squatocracy".
With an electoral gerrymander in place to ensure that their numbers could not be surpassed by the city electors, they enacted many pieces of legislation that grotesquely skewed the economic distribution in Victoria for the best part of 75 years.
When economic reality finally arrived in the 1960s, many of the families in the Western District found that living off the land was not as gracious and attactive as it was of yore with the result that many of the large properties were broken up and sold off.
Finally, may I add how much golf has improved over the past 35-40 years. When I played in Riversdale Cup, the club would issue invitations to all amateurs with a handicap of five or less. Many of the participatns in those days had "Hollywood" handicaps, for under the standard scratch system of the time, they were only required to register their 10 best scores of the previous 12 months.
Now one would need to have a handicap of 1 to ensure entry into what has rightly been described as one of Australia's most prestigious amateur tournaments.