User:Hoddywell Archery Park

Hoddywell Archery Park
Located 85km from Perth and 15km from Toodyay, Western Australia, Hoddywell Archery Park is Australia's first and largest public Archery Park being established in 1978.

The idea for a public archery park where the general public could come and have a round of archery started at the Moorabbin Archery Club in Victoria by two keen target archers, Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Ian Camm. 50 acres of land was bought in Western Australia as prices were more affordable than in Victoria.

The 50 acre property was situated in the Shire of Toodyay, and in the locality of Hoddy's Well. To keep a connection with the local area the the name of the locality Hoddy's Well was combined to the new name of Hoddywell. The business was called Hoddywell Archery, later to generate more public interest the word Park was added to the business name making Australia's first public Archery Park called Hoddywell Archery Park.

In the early days of the archery park 2 acres of land was cleared (mostly by hand in the Western Australian summer) to set up 8 offical 90m, 80m, 70m, 50m and 30m target lanes. Competitions were organized such as the Hoddywell Open and the Hoddywell Longbow to bring Target Archers and Bowhunting Archers together. There was mild interest shown by the archery clubs in Perth. It was soon found out that archers got bored of shooting the same targets, soon after a small 9 target trail was made, played to a similar fashion to a game of mini golf. Today at the archery park there is 3 shooting trails and one target lane.

The original archery park building was an old refurbished shed located on the property. The roof was leaky and became very hot during summer. A new building was built in the early 1980's (originally a farm shed) which was located nest to the already existing caravan park and public toliets. This building is still in use today and has receantly renovated it's archery museum to make way for more storage for the archery park's mail order business.

Hoddywell had it's own archery club but it was soon found out that this wasn't generating enough money and was slowly dissolved.

During the past 20 years of operation, Hoddywell Archery Park has been under management by business partners. This slowed the archery park sales and it was up for sale in the early 2000's. Luckily all of the business was bought back by the original founder of the archery park, Ernst Kaltenbrunner.

The past 10 years has seen much needed improvements to the archery park. Hoddywell Archery Park is Australia's first, largest and only public Archery Park. Hoddywell is also the Avon Valley's first tourist attraction which generates lots of tourism to the region.