Marri Park Golf Course
Twelve months of production bore meter data on a Bassendean sand course. Bore extraction fell 30.1% against a three-year average, and the course carried out no returfing for the first time in four years.
Conducted by NewGround Water Services Pty Ltd, which has managed grounds and turf maintenance at Marri Park Golf Course for four years, reporting from the course's own production bore meters.
- LOCATION
- 34 Marri Park Dr, Casuarina, Western Australia (32.2357°S, 115.8615°E)
- PERIOD
- 12 months · July 2025 to June 2026
- EQUIPMENT
- President Water vortex generators, installed across the course irrigation system
What the trial measured
Water use against a three-year baseline
THE STANDOUT RESULT- Trial year bore extraction was 234,018m³ against a prior three-year average of 335,150m³, a 30.1% reduction.
- That is 101,132m³ less water in a single financial year, just over 101 million litres.
- Bore usage fell to 54.2% of the course's 432,000m³ licence allocation, down from a three-year average of 77.5%.
- Measured against the immediately preceding season alone (297,978m³), the reduction was 21.5%.
- Every figure comes from the course's own production bore meters across bores 1 to 4, reported month by month in the source document.
Isolating the technology from the weather
- Efficiency was indexed as bore litres pumped per millimetre of natural rainfall at the course's exact coordinates.
- 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 delivered near-identical rainfall, 781.1mm against 784.9mm.
- The index fell from 381,485 to 298,150 litres per millimetre, a 21.8% reduction under effectively the same climatic conditions.
- Earlier years index at 471,570 litres/mm (2022-2023) and 656,552 litres/mm (2023-2024, which the report flags as a dry year anomaly).
- Rainfall data came from the Open-Meteo Historical Weather API, which combines local weather station readings and satellite data for specific GPS coordinates.
Turf health on Bassendean sand
- No returfing was carried out during the trial year, the first time since NewGround commenced the contract four years earlier.
- Marri Park sits on a Bassendean sand profile: fast-draining, highly prone to becoming hydrophobic, and poor at retaining moisture.
- Combatting that profile had historically required aggressive watering regimes and regular returfing to repair dry patches and turf fatigue.
- The 16th fairway, previously scarred with brown patching from poor sprinkler coverage, closed in over the trial year.
- Proposed mechanism: reduced surface tension improved soil penetration and deep root hydration, overcoming the sand profile's natural hydrophobic tendency.
- Because establishing new turf itself requires intensive high-volume watering, removing that task compounds the volumetric saving.
Operational effects beyond volume
- Pumping over 100,000m³ less water cut pump run times and extraction durations across bores 1 to 4, reducing kilowatt-hour draw.
- Shorter run times decreased wear on bore pumps, irrigation lines and valving.
- Labour hours fell, driven mainly by the elimination of returfing and fewer manual interventions for spot watering.
- The report states these savings are significant and obvious but does not itemise a dollar figure for any of the three.
“By indexing our water usage against corresponding localised rainfall, the data confirms a pure irrigation efficiency gain of nearly 22%, completely independent of seasonal weather variations.”
This is a working golf course on sand, not a research plot. Bassendean sand is the profile most turf managers in the Perth basin are fighting: it drains fast, it turns hydrophobic, and it punishes you for every millimetre you fail to get into the root zone. If that is your ground, the translation to your own operation is short.
The number that survives scrutiny is not the 30.1%. It is the 21.8%. A course can cut its bore usage in a wet year and prove nothing. So the report indexed every litre pumped against the rain that actually fell on those coordinates, then found two consecutive years with rainfall within four millimetres of each other. Same rain, same course, same crew. Twenty-two percent less water pumped.
The returfing result is the one a superintendent will feel first. Four years of laying new turf every season to patch what the sand killed, then a year of none. Renovation is expensive in material, in labour, and in the high-volume watering it takes to establish. That saving compounds on top of the metered one and sits outside it.
What this trial does not have is a control. There is no untreated nine holes running alongside the treated ones, so the comparison is against the site's own history rather than a side-by-side. The rainfall indexing is a serious attempt to close that gap and it is a good one, but it is not the same thing as a control, and the report was written by the contractor managing the course rather than an independent assessor. Read the meter tables at the back and judge for yourself.
Trial at a glance
- SITE
- 18-hole golf course on a Bassendean sand profile, Casuarina, Western Australia
- MANAGED BY
- NewGround Water Services Pty Ltd, grounds contractor for four years
- TRIAL PERIOD
- 12 months, July 2025 to June 2026, one full irrigation season
- BASELINE
- Aggregated three-year average of 2022-2023, 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 extraction
- MEASUREMENT
- Metered, from production bore meters on bores 1 to 4, recorded monthly
- LICENCE
- 432,000m³ production bore allocation per financial year
- EQUIPMENT
- President Water vortex generators across the course irrigation system
- RAINFALL SOURCE
- Open-Meteo Historical Weather API, indexed to 32.2357°S, 115.8615°E
- NORMALISATION
- Bore litres pumped per millimetre of natural rainfall, calculated per financial year
- AGRONOMIC MEASURE
- Returfing events carried out, against four prior seasons of routine returfing
- PROMPTED BY
- Documented outcomes at City of Armadale's Gwynne Park, Curtin University and other WA facilities
Verified by Sam Butler, Superintendent, Marri Park Golf Course · NewGround Water Services Pty Ltd.
Findings that cut against the headline. We publish them because a grower deciding on a retrofit deserves the whole picture.
- There was no untreated control area on the course. The comparison is against the site's own historical extraction, normalised for rainfall, rather than a side-by-side control running the same season.
- The report was authored by NewGround Water Services, the contractor that manages the course, not by an independent assessor.
- The rainfall index uses modelled reanalysis data for the site coordinates rather than an on-site gauge.
- Savings in power, hardware wear and labour are described as significant but are not itemised, costed, or separately measured.
- The report does not state which vortex generator models were installed, how many, or where in the irrigation line they sit.
Read the underlying report
Every figure on this page is traceable to the documents below. Nothing is modelled, estimated, or extrapolated.
CITATIONNewGround Water Services Pty Ltd (2026). Marri Park Golf Course: Irrigation and Agronomy Impact Report. Marri Park Golf Course, 34 Marri Park Dr, Casuarina, Western Australia. Trial period July 2025 to June 2026.
President Water Company · presidentwater.com · Marri Park Golf Course, 12 months · July 2025 to June 2026