35 in the USA before they established the design office in Florida. Norman was at the height of his career and his time was obviously devoted mostly to playing, and based in the Sydney office of IMG, I was fairly remote. I was fortunate to have a fair degree of autonomy. “The press in Australia gradually began to attribute the design, at least partly, to me. And they began to describe the projects as Norman/ Harrison. The most prominent of the Australian writers, Tom Ramsey, went one step further and reversed the order of the names. I suspect that this didn’t sit well in the USA, but that’s just my impression. I had the job for 22 years and I’ll confine my comments to saying that it wasn’t as enjoyable in the latter stages.” Working in a signature firm has pros and cons for architects. In the final analysis, it is not your business, and not your name on the golf courses, but on the other hand, you tend to be working on big money projects for high profile clients, and that is certainly so for Harrison. In the late 1990s, GNGCD, and therefore he, was commissioned by Australia’s richest man, media mogul Kerry Packer, to design a course at a remote location in inland New South Wales, about four hours’ drive from Sydney. The course he built, Ellerston, is remarkable for several reasons. It is good enough to be considered a top ten course in golf-rich Australia, it is renowned for its difficulty, and it is one of the hardest-to-access courses anywhere: to play there requires a personal invitation from a member of the Packer family (Kerry died in 2005, four years after the course opened). “In the first instance they intended to develop a course elsewhere and Kerry Packer had a connection with Norman that led to us being chosen to do the work,” says Harrison. “Eventually Packer moved the project to Ellerston and the instruction was Bob Harrison has designed golf courses in Australia, Asia, Europe and America Photo: Konrad Borkowski
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