Frequently Asked Questions

Of course! Probably the best day of the week & time to do that is on Saturdays after 1pm. Around that time there should be someone available to answer any questions you have & to show you around. However, you can't "just have a quick shoot" unless you are already an Archery Club member. Sorry!

No! You MUST be a member of Archery Australia and/or our Club to shoot at our grounds. Learn more about joining here.

Unless you have been given a key, or special permission, sorry but the answer is No!

Sadly, No. In order to join our club, you must have done a Beginner's Course or Come & Try class with a recognised club in the last 12 months. This is standard across all AA clubs. This is for your & everyone else's safety. While our sport is incredibly safe, you are wielding a deadly weapon after all. If you were a club member, you'd want us to make sure the person standing next to you with a loaded weapon is trained & safe too.

There are a number of reasons for this:

• It's typically very hot in those months. Whilst some archers have enough stamina to stand in the heat for several hours, not everyone can. Over the years, we've found most new participants just don't enjoy that sort of experience, we want our participants to have a good experience. Our instructors are all volunteers, and they too don't like being out in the heat that much either; so we look after our volunteers by avoiding that whole problem.

• We deserve a break! Our instructors have been doing courses almost every weekend of the year, they need time to fling some arrows,  have a vacation, and/or spend time with their families too.

• People go on holidays around the time of year, so it's harder to fill our roster with available volunteer instructors.

The club has extensive hire gear available for new archers. We strongly recommend hiring gear at the beginning before you commit serious money to the sport. This is especially important for children who often change their minds about activities frequently.

As you get more experienced & stronger, you will progress through beginner gear fairly rapidly. You can often save yourself some significant money by progressing through the club hire bows till you're stronger & fitter, thus closer to your ideal bow weight (strength).

Our main club day is Saturday. No doubt. Most of our training & club competitions are also performed on Saturdays too. However, the club is open for Archery Practice on at least a couple of Sundays a month, and most public holidays. We are also trialling having the club open on some mornings during the working week. There are other Archery Clubs around South-East Queensland that regularly on Sunday mornings (GCAC), and during the week & selected nights. (MPB & SVTA)

If you are looking to join, but can't attend a Saturday Come & Try class, please contact us. We may be able to arrange a private class for you, depending on our volunteer instructors' availability.

Unfortunately, no. In order to shoot at our club requires membership to an Archery club, preferably ours. So, to shoot, you will need to join Archery Australia etc, and our club, otherwise you need to be under instruction. i.e. In one of our classes or 1:1 with an AA qualified instructor.

Once you join Archery Australia & our club on line, after we verify you have done the appropriate course, effectively you are a member immediately, and can shoot at our club. e.g. If you've just done our course, you can sign-up on-line on your phone, & show us the email receipt, pay the appropriate ground fees, and you can shoot immediately!

Our suggested minimum of 10 years old is based on a combination of maturity level and physical strength requirements.
We do however, have a hard minimum age limit of 8 years old.

Mental:
While Archery is a very safe sport, our bows & arrows are not toys. In order to keep people safe we require children to be able to faithfully follow the instructions of someone other than their parents. As the parent, only you know that about your child. During a Come & Try class, you will be required to be at the club (participating is fine) as well.

Physical:
They will be pulling back (equivalent of lifting) approximately 6kg or more, up to 50 or more times during a session. If you are not sure your child can do that, you are welcome to come down to the club when we are open and they can try pulling back one of our bows.

We require all of our archers to be suitably trained in archery.  As a bow and arrow together are treated as a loaded weapon, we need to make sure everyone at our club knows how to handle them safely. Our club runs almost-weekly Come & Try classes which covers the safety & basics of archery. This gives people a taste of Archery to see if they like it, and the necessary training to perform archery safely. There are other Archery Australia affiliated clubs & organisations around us,  who also hold similar Come & Try/Archery Introduction classes too. You can check with them as well, as they might have openings in their courses sooner than ours. Provided they are willing to give you a suitable certificate at the end of their course, we will accept that in lieu of our own training. Some places nearby you might want to try are (in distance from our club order):

• Rogue Archery (26km)

• Mount Petrie Bowman (33km)

• Samford Valley Target Archers (36km)

• Gold Coast Archery Club (98km)

• Sunshine Coast Archery Club (108km)

• Toowoomba Company of Archers (120km)

• Byron Shire Archery Club (167km)

• Lismore City Archers (231km)

• Harvey Bay Archers (299km)

We can also potentially arrange a private Come & Try class for you too.

Yes. Our club is a registered recipient of the Fair Play Voucher system. The vouchers are typically for $150.

They can be used for our Come & Try classes, our Beginners Course,  AA & Club membership, and pretty much any service the club provides.

Unfortunately, the vouchers can't be used to book directly by yourselves. You will need to sign up or register for each service, but NOT PAY. You can then send us the Fair Play Voucher, telling us what it is for. We will coordinate with you, process it, & then ensure the services are paid for from the club's accounts. We will work with you to maximise the value of the voucher as best we can while following the rules.
Remember: The rules of the voucher [5.2.b] are that the voucher can be used only once, we can't use the remainder later for other fees.

For example:

• A Come & Try class is only $65;

• A Non-Members Beginners Course ($130);

• A private Come & Try class ($130);

or (if you've already recently done that course, or are a member already);

• An annual AA/Club youth membership ($137.75) + a single visit with gear hire ($10) in a single transaction, leaving only $2.25 of the voucher unspent.

If you have any queries, please contact us.

Normally, you can use our Gift Certificates directly at the Square Payment Terminal at the club. However, for our courses where you need to book on-line, that system doesn't use Square as a payment service, so we have to do things slightly differently. Instead, you book your course with all the people you're going to pay for, and stop just before entering your payment details. You then need to email us with the date, the names of the people you've just entered details for, and the Square Gift Certificate codes you wish to use. We will process the codes and mark the individuals as paid in the system.

Unfortunately, our club has little to do with the Archery Australia Membership card. If it hasn't arrived within a month or so, you need to chase it up with Archery Australia (AA) directly. Unfortunately,  it is not uncommon for it to slip through the cracks at AA. The joining process normally goes something like this:

1. You apply to join & pay online via the AA's website.

2. Our club (CAC) gets notified you've applied & paid.

3. We check you've completed or meet the safety requirements. e.g. Come & Try etc.

   • If so, we let you know by email that you can attend & start shooting immediately. This happens within a day or so.

4. Our committee meets to approve pending memberships This can take days to weeks depending on timing & schedules.

   • Once approved, we mark you as accepted in AA's database, send you an email welcoming you officially to the club, & let you know your AA number.

5. AA then prints your card, and mails it directly to you. It normally takes a week or two to be processed & arrive.

Our club (and all Archery Australia(AA) clubs) can't just let people walk up and join with no Target Archery experience. It's a huge safety issue, for yourself & others. Everyone on our range has to be intimately familiar with all the safety rules & signals, and how to control & use potentially lethal equipment.
To that end, in order to join an AA affiliated club (which our club is), we are required to ensure you're adequately trained so that you won't get hurt, or accidentally hurt others. We primarily do this via a Come & Try class. That class will teach you the safety basics you're expected to know, how to do the basics of archery so you don't hurt yourself later, and have a bunch of fun while doing all of it.

When you've recently completed that course, or have a recent certificate or membership of a similar club that we recognise, then & only then you can then apply for membership of our club, and enjoy the use of our facilities & offerings. When joining our club, you are not just joining the Centenary Archers Club, you're also joining AA, which allows you to shoot at other AA clubs all over Australia. This means we are vouching for you to an entire country & community of archers. Hence we have to be sure you know the rules, & are safe before we can let you join. Less obviously but equally true, it is also so we all remain covered by the various insurance policies.

Once you've applied to join our club, we will first check that you meet the requirements above. Assuming that is the case, we will notify you that you can shoot at our club immediately, and that your membership application will be reviewed by our committee within 1-4 weeks. Once they approve, you'll become a probational member of our club, and after six (6) months, a full member. Because the committee review & approval process can take some time, you're able to use our club's facilities as a normal members can, unless told otherwise.

When you're approved by our committee, we notify AA, and they will issue you a membership card. It typically arrives in 2-4 weeks after your approval. Once you have your AA card, you can potentially shoot at any AA affilated club.

No. If you are not doing archery (shooting) as well, you don't need to book or pay at all. The same goes for visitors & spectators.

In Archery, we do have the concept of an athlete's agent. That's someone who assists an archer, ranging from giving archery advice & information to the archer on the shooting line, to going out to collect & score their arrows when they can't. In those cases, we will ask the agent to sign-in, so they're covered by insurance, but they still don't have to pay any fees etc.

Only the person shooting or under instruction incurs fees.

Heck yes!

We are a very welcoming & friendly archery club. We are open to all club archers whenever possible.

If you're a member of any Archery Australia (AA) club, you can shoot at our club as much as you like. Just present your AA card. There is a slightly higher fee for Visiting AA archers.

If you are a member of a club that is part of The Archery Alliance of Australia (i.e. 3DAAA, ABA, or TAA), or from a World Archery affiliated club from a different country, you can also shoot at our club too. Proof of membership of your home club is required. There is some minor paperwork, a higher fee for an Archery Alliance or International visitor and there is a limitation that you can only shoot a maximum of 4 times in a 12 month period before you need to become a member of an Archery Australia club.

Our lower (main) field has 35 shooting lanes, currently 31 of those lanes are available for practice. Our lanes are 3 metres wide, easily allowing 3 archers per lane with a 1 metre space. World Archery rules only require 80cm per archer. Of our available lanes, 28 meet or exceed the standards for competitions. 33 of those lanes have a covered waiting line area.

We also have a smaller upper field that can host another 10 target lanes if required.

We have 13 x Danage target butts & 17 x On Target Archery butts.

That means on a normal practice day, we can have up to 90 archers comfortable shooting simultaneously.

Hopefully the rest is self evident and obvious to you.

For past archers who have belonged to a club fairly recently (non-shooting for a few years ago, not decades) we will let you skip our Come & Try classes, and we will have you shoot with one of our club instructors to ensure you are fine, safe, & are aware of Archery Australia (AA) Target Archery rules & etiquette. There is a minor fee (Visiting Non-AA Archers) for this. Once the instructor is happy, you're fine to shoot alone for the rest of the session, and apply for membership of our club.

If you are currently a member of a recognised non-AA club, the above applies as well.

If you want to take this approach, please let us know first so we can ensure we have an instructor available for you.

For current members of a non-Australian World Archery club, proof of membership & a letter from your club indicating you're in good standing is all that is needed.