At first, it was nothing to crow about.

The black-winged and beady-eyed birds swooped down to pick up one of Kialla Golf Club’s plastic orbs.

Clutched securely in their beaks, they took flight on a 3km journey to Ian Parsons’ property, where they perched on a post of his 44ha hobby farm and attempted to crack open what they thought was an egg.

With no luck, the scoundrels of the sky dropped the ball and fled.

Mr Parsons, while moving cattle or tending to other tasks, often spotted these discarded spheres in his paddocks.

Like a parent picking up their children’s toys, he would do so by tossing them into a bucket.

Collect, fly, drop.

Find, collect, bucket.

Repeat this process for the next 20 years, accumulating hundreds of golf balls.

Then, one day, the peculiar happened.

Mr Parsons noticed a golf ball like no other — it was oval-shaped.

“It might be worth millions,” he said with a chuckle.

“Not really — but maybe it was professionally made for some reason.”

The reason: GolfCross.

GolfCross is a variant of golf developed in New Zealand in the late 1980s.

It is played similarly to golf, with two major differences: the shape of the ball and the shape of the target.

The oval ball is designed to give players more control over its trajectory (preferably into suspended goal nets), and because it spins on two axes, it is nearly impossible to hook or slice the ball.

A spokesperson from the Kialla Golf Club said they had never encountered a GolfCross ball before.

Could a new sport be silently swinging in the Goulburn Valley?

It’s possible — if those aerial bandits stop stealing the equipment.

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Tuesday, 20th May 2025

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