A Trip Down Under

After years of urging by my friend Brad James to come to Australia, the opportunity arose. Our son Kyle and his wife, Stephanie, were to be in Auckland, New Zealand for nearly two months. Thus we decided to make the journey to visit the land down under. We would fly to Sydney, go on to Adelaide, then Kangaroo Island and back to Melbourne before a brief stop in Auckland. The horrible fires captured the news for a month along with the Coronavirus, bringing the trip into question, but in the end did not alter the plan. Little did we know the tragedies would make our trip less stressful with the lack of tourists. 

After a couple of days seeing Sydney, a city we heard so much about, we flew on to Adelaide.

Twenty minutes by plane off the coast of Adelaide is Kangaroo Island. Unknown by most until the recent fires brought a CBS 60 Minutes segment, it is an irregularly shaped piece of land about 55 miles long and 35 miles wide. 4700 people live on Kangaroo Island. It is one of the most remote places I have ever been.

About a third of the island was devastated by the fires which destroyed 85 homes, killed hundreds of kangaroo, wallaby and koala. Tourism, farming, sheep and cattle along with running the National Park make up nearly all of the economy. A burgeoning wine making industry is taking shape on the island with ideal conditions for growing grapes and olives. 

The largest fire on the island was on the west end in the large Flinders Chase National Park. Fire is a natural occurrence on the island and throughout Australia, triggered by extended dry periods, touched off by lighting. In the past, management of the forest in the national park involved controlled winter burning of the floor of the forest. Evidently this controlled burn had not been done for a number of years and the response of the current park rangers was not fast enough for containment which led to the severity of this year’s fire.  

“My grandfather was a forest ranger for over 40 years,” said a resident of the island with whom we talked. “He had controlled burns in circles, the way the indigenous people taught him. The new park people didn’t want to do winter burns or control the fire, just let it burn. Cattle were killed, sheep, houses, two people died. It didn’t need to happen.”

The intensity of the heat melted aluminum. Animals were found dead where there was no fire, they cooked. Temperatures were estimated at over 2000 degrees. 

While this was one of the largest fires in history in Australia, the animal numbers will recover. “This is how nature in Australia works,” one of our guides told me. “We have fires.  However, this year the whole world saw the photo of the injured koala walking across a road into a burned out forest.”

Nearly every reservation on Kangaroo Island was cancelled for several weeks in January of 2020, in the belief the island was totally burned up. In fact less than half of the large island has been closed and is very much ‘open for business’.

We stayed at a three room inn, Molly’s Run, on Kangaroo Island. Following one of the finest meals I have ever had, prepared by our hostess Charmaine, her husband Paul took us out after dark to see animals. The kangaroo, wallaby and possum are all nocturnal animals. They venture out into the pastureland to feed at night. Driving out into a field, we observed dozens of kangaroos and wallabies within a short drive. Possums are just as common. 

There are no predators for the animals on the island other than eagles bothering the small possum. As a result we were able to venture around in the field without the animals fleeing.  Driving around we were on constant vigil for koalas in trees and kangaroos keeping cool under bush.

“The koala lives in the eucalyptus trees eating only fresh leaves from the tree. The eucalyptus has very little nutritional value, thus the koala has a very low energy level, sleeping about 20 hours a day,” our guide, Ron Shaw told us. 

We flew on to Melbourne, on the southeast coast of Australia. It’s a world class city of 5,000,000 in the throws of a big building boom in the city center CBD. A very architecturally interesting city, many new buildings are on the way up or have recently been finished. One million people have moved to Melbourne in the past eight years.

A highlight of the trip was to playing Royal Melbourne Golf Club. Brad James, Director of Development for the Australian Golf Union and former golf coach for the University of Minnesota Men’s Golf Team was my host.

The course is located in the Sand Belt area on the north side of Melbourne. There are seven courses in the Sand Belt, four nearly contiguous and three, more just a few minutes away. All seven are highly regarded with Royal Melbourne, Victoria, and Kingston Heath on the list of the top courses in Australia. Royal Melbourne is rated as one of the top ten in the world on many lists.

Alister MacKenzie is credited with being the architect of Royal Melbourne along with consulting on three other courses in the Sand Belt, Metro, Kingston Heath and Victory. However, while it was Alister’s routing of the holes, Alex Russell, who was in charge of the construction of the course, seems to get more credit at the club for the final design. MacKenzie only saw one hole completed. 

Like all MacKenzie courses I have played the greens are challenging.  His courses have greens with sections in the US.  If the player can get the ball into the section of the hole location there is not much of a problem. A ball in a different section brings challenges. In addition there are false fronts or parts of the green that the ball will roll off to the side. MacKenzie greens vary in size from small to large and with a fast green speed, putting skill is tested.

However at Royal Melbourne, instead of a steady diet of false fronts, many greens have several shoulders that may keep a ball on the green. In addition, while there are distinctive areas on the greens, the noticeable sections of other McKenzie greens, are largely not at Royal Melbourne. It’s a different look for a MacKenzie course, evidence Alex Russell played a big part in the design. 

Royal Melbourne is massive. The fairways are wide, the greens are huge, and the large deep bunkers vary in location from against the greens with no fringe, to some distance away. Most bunkers have grasses in or around them remindful of courses in the British Isles and Ireland. As with all great courses, the entire place has a great look. It’s a wonderful combination of holes, some flowing up, down and around slopes. The 7th has the unusual combination of being a short, great, (138 yards from the back) uphill, par three.    

The biggest surprise is the length, only 6600 from the back tees. “By speeding up the greens it’s a different course,” Brad James told me. “It’s better to putt up hill from 30’ than down hill from 10’.”  Players of all abilities will have fun playing Royal Melbourne, another factor making it great. Then, by speeding up the greens and working with the hole locations, it becomes a great championship golf course.

“Several holes have been on the Top Holes In Australia,” another playing partner, Steve Pitt, said.

Golf in Australia has several differences from golf in the USA. On a day with starting times filled solidly all day, I did not see one riding cart. Everybody pushes a cart. The cost of private club golf is significantly lower. Monthly dues at Royal Melbourne are about $400 a month. It is one of the most exclusive courses in the city.

As a result some differences are evident. Practice balls are distributed from a machine are the standard yellow balls found at public driving ranges. No Titleist balls on this driving range. The biggest difference is that the government underwrites sport in Australia including golf. “The government has given the Australian Golf Union (Australia’s USGA)$15,000,000 to build a performance center at Sandringham Public Golf Course located across the street from Royal Melbourne. Royal Melbourne will manage the facility and the Australian Golf Union will use it for their high performance training,” Brad James said. 

The government is giving a private club $15,000,000 to build a performance center on a public golf facility to be managed by the private course for the benefit of the golf association. Things are different in Australia.

There are direct subsidies given to promising men and women players. The Australian Golf Union works with the players at all levels, consulting on their schedule, training and coaching. The model has paid dividends. There are more Australian golfers playing at a high level, per capita than any country in the world. 

Royal Melbourne was in great condition. Recent rains had turned the brown fairways to green. A bent grass, fescue mix is on the fairways with bent grass greens. Off the wide fairways conditions are similar to the British Isles. With the sand base and lack of rain earlier in the summer, it is not unusual to catch a hard packed sand lie.

It is interesting to note that in the past 100 years course design has gone from what we find at Royal Melbourne, with wide, watered, fairways very large greens and bunkering that protects some sections of the greens to narrow fairways, small greens and bunkers in a formulaic layout, and back again. The new courses today have the same makeup as 100 years ago. Wide fairways, huge greens, fewer but well placed bunkers. Maybe the early designers from Scotland had it right.

Australia is a long way to go to play golf. Royal Melbourne is becoming more difficult to get on, but not impossible. However, there’s a lot of great golf down under. I hope that someday I can return to play more of the Sand Belt courses in A Life In Golf.