History

The Travelling Bowlers are a sub club of the Parramatta Leagues Club and it is difficult to know when the club was formed. The popular belief is that we have been going in excess of forty years. The membership has been steady over the last five years and at the last count we numbered 104. Three of our members have been active for more than thirty years, but that's enough of our history.
We meet monthly in the Scania room at the Vikings club in Dundas, if anyone is interested in joining us that's the place to be at 1.00pm on the first Monday of each month (except January) or call the Bowls Secretary (see Committee page for details).

Although it is not generally known, the popular game of Woods was first invented by some of the Hobbit children down in the Marish.

It appears that Jack Sandyditch and his sister Kitty, having been told the story of 'how Bullroarer Took (on a horse), charged the ranks of the goblins of Mount Gram in the battle of the Green Fields, and knocked their king Golfimbul's head clean off with a wooden club. It sailed a hundred yards through the air and went down a rabbit-hole, and in this way the battle was won and the game of golf was invented at the same time.' *
This history lesson inspired the children to emulate the deed and so Jack carved a replica of the goblin's head and Kitty collected a couple of stout wooden clubs. The ensuing attempts to hit the head down a nearby rabbit-hole attracted the attention of several more children and soon there was quite a group running around wildly bashing at the head with sticks.
That night one of the parents inquired as to the source of the many bruises his children had acquired and when learning about the game sensibly banned the use of the clubs.
Next day many of the children tried to continue the game by kicking the head, but due to it's likeness to the goblin king, it wouldn't roll straight. At this point Jack tried bowling the head along the ground at a nearby small white stone and was startled by the way in which it curved and the degree of skill needed to get anywhere near it. Realising that this was indeed something new and challenging, the children set about carving their own wooden heads and within a few days the game of Woods was well established in the Marish.

*The Hobbit pp25 by J R R Tolkien