Community
17 September, 2025
Eighty years of entertaining
THE ‘Goss’ has covered a number of milestone events over the last year, including key local school anniversaries, plus significant individual birthday and wedding anniversary celebrations.
One such landmark anniversary has been the 80th birthday at Club Mossman, originally known as Mossman Memorial Bowls Club.
The club’s premises has seen extensive improvements in recent months, these upgrades costing around $5.5 million.
The revamp has proved to be popular with both locals and visitors to the Douglas Shire and their timely completion has coincided with the club’s celebration of 80 years in the community, making it the area’s oldest social club.
The current clubhouse opened in 1996 with the original site located near the current Mossman Showgrounds.
With nothing more than a small cottage and a patch of land, the members cleared the site and built the first bowling greens by hand. This original cottage eventually relocated to Mango Park Road and is now the Mossman Sharks club rooms.
To commemorate this 80th year, Club Mossman has been giving away weekly prizes, over the last few weeks, with draws taking place each Sunday up until a grand finale and official opening on Sunday 24 August.
A number of dignitaries attended the final Sunday including Mayor Lisa Scomazzon, deputy mayor Roy Zamatarro, club president Bill Allison and new club manager Matt Bressington.
Mr Bressington started on Monday 25 August, just prior to the culmination of a month-long birthday celebrations.
With an initial career in retail, hospitality and food services, Mr Bressington has also worked in tourism as a tour operator at Green Island and more recently worked in Cairns at the much larger Brothers Leagues Club in an operations role.
He is also currently completing a Bachelor of Management and tourism at JCU Cairns and is in his final year.
“I hope to continue on with the great work the club has already done by becoming an integral part of the community,” Mr Bressington said.
One of his first roles was to award a $5000 cash prize to winning local Trish Arnold.
Other club members took a share of another $5000 during the afternoon.
Apart from the cash, a number of other prizes were up for grabs over the month of celebrations.
“The weekly prizes have been kindly donated by local businesses to the tune of over $3000 which is amazing,” said the club’s marketing and advertising manager, Melissa Di Pietro.
“They could win anything from a Sunset Sailaway voucher for two adults, to a $200 voucher at Vic’s Mowers, or a two-hour clean from The Fairy’s Been Cleaning Services” she said.
No doubt Club Mossman members and its management team and staff are looking forward to many more years of success at a venue that is extremely popular to both locals and visitors to the Douglas Shire.
I’m off to the club for a roll up and a great lunch, so for now it’s Gazza signing out.
Send your stories to gazza@cairnslocalnews.com.au
