About 15,600km from St Andrews in Scotland and about 17,000km from Mar-a-Lago in Florida sits Eucla, Western Australia, where on a fine sunny day the players from an extraordinary golf tournament pose for a photo.
They’re playing the Nullarbor Links, the world’s longest golf course, which runs for 1,365km (850 miles) across ancient, arid desert in outback Australia. Other than the game itself, it has nothing whatever in common with its famous counterparts – or any other golf course in the world.
The 18-hole, par-72 course starts at Ceduna in South Australia and crosses the flat limestone bedrock to reach Kalgoorlie in Western Australia. Needless to say, there’s a lot of driving between each hole.
Players scrap it out on scrubby dirt and worn astroturf, from behind shedding gums and across airstrips, dodging snakes, spiders and wombats along the way.
Graeme and Bea Wilmot organise the annual 10-day Chasing the Sun tournament, which wrapped up on Saturday.
They play on sand greens in Ceduna and manicured lawns in Kalgoorlie, but in between it’s a different story.
“Anything between the tee off and the green is wild outback. There are lots of snakes, lizards, spiders, wombats, dingoes, camels …” Bea Wilmot says.
They’ve had people from Germany, Vietnam, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa play, along with a fair number of Australia’s grey nomads.
Wilmot “reluctantly” went on her first tournament with Graeme in 2017.
“He was the golf fanatic and I was the golf widow. Over the 10 days I went from golf widow to golf tragic,” she says.
“By the time we got home, I’d ordered clubs and joined the local golf club.”
Furry bikinis and Jimmy Carter
The Nullarbor Links names holes instead of numbering them – because you can play from Ceduna to Kalgoorlie or the other way around.
“Each hole is unique. They’re all special in their own way,” Wilmot says, but he gives a passing mention to The Wombat Hole at Nundroo, named after the southern hairy-nosed variety.
“That’s a par five with a dog leg. You can’t see the green from the tee box so you have to go around the corner and hit blindly. There’s rocks and everything in the way,” she says.
“And it crosses the RFDS [Royal Flying Doctor Service] strip.”
The groups raise money for the RFDS along the way by fining players for anything stupid or funny they do, and rattling the tin at roadhouse stops.
Other notable holes include the Nullarbor Nymph at Eucla, named after a 1971 story about a girl in a “sort of furry bikini”, thought to be rabbit skin, who was supposedly running around the outback with a mob of kangaroos.
The State Library of Western Australia notes that the story was “created by beer”, when a “yarn about a half-naked sheila living in the desert with the kangaroos” made up by some blokes in a bar spread to become one of Australia’s most famous hoaxes.
At Balladonia, the SkyLab par three pays tribute to chunks of the SkyLab spacecraft– parts of Nasa’s abandoned space research laboratory – that landed nearby in July 1979.
“The US president [Jimmy Carter] personally rang Balladonia Hotel Motel to apologise for Skylab falling on them,” the Nullarbor Links website notes.
The roadhouse is where the idea for the golf course was spawned by manager, Bob Bongiorno, Wilmot says.
“[He] came up with the idea to help prevent driver fatigue, reduce fatalities and raise awareness of the little towns across the 1,365kms of the Eyre Highway,” she says.
The golfers play a few holes each day, stopping for organised games and events, meals and drinks, and a bit of sightseeing.
At the Nullarbor Roadhouse, the Big Whale – one of Australia’s “big things” – sits between the petrol pumps.
At Border Village, straddling SA and WA, the group poses around Rooey II, a giant kangaroo offering Vegemite to passersby.
The nearby world cities sign shows it’s 2,080km to Sydney; 15,075km to New York, 17,517km to London.
They’re all sporting their team T-shirts, adorned with classic Australian road signs warning of crossing wildlife.
Paul Windle combines his team T-shirt with bright yellow trousers, yellow argyle socks, a yellow flat cap and, often, a Lonsdale Pacifico cigar.
The avid golfer from the northern New South Wales town of Murwillumbah and his “golf nut” partner, Kathryn Newcombe, took six weeks’ holiday to chase the sun.
“I’ve never had this long off work before,” he says.
“Three times I’ve woken up and thought I had to go in … but all I have to do is play golf.”
He says he’s never seen anything like the Nullarbor scenery, but he does have one complaint.
“I feel a little ripped off because everything is so green [after recent rain],” he says.
“It’s meant to be all red dirt, but there’s been so much rain everything’s green … That’s probably something not many people will get to see either.”
‘Keep your hands out of holes!’
The Nullarbor is the traditional land of the Mirning people, but the name comes from the Latin for “no trees”. The golf course crosses the lands of other First Nations people and three time zones – thanks to the idiosyncratic Central Western zone that is 45 minutes ahead of the rest of WA and 45 minutes behind South Australia.
The Nullarbor Links website advises players to be careful not to step on snakes, or disturb holes in the ground as they “could be homes for large spiders, wombats or snakes”.
“Keep your hands out of holes!” it warns.
It’s a different world to Dent Island, a verdant idyll in the Whitsundays ringed by beaches. Dent Island is home to the Hamilton Island golf club, run by Leanne Balkin and Scott Armstrong, who took a break from the tropics to play the Nullarbor Links.
Balkin says her favourite part of the course is the “shenanigans” between holes, such as searching for buried treasure at the Eucla beach.
“You all had to chip [the golf ball] to where you thought [the treasure] was buried,” she says.
“It was my favourite because I won.”
Her advice to others? “Don’t bring yellow balls,” she says.
“Crows steal the yellow balls. They will swoop down and take your ball off the fairway.”
Grant Hart is the music man who has been keeping the troops entertained for four years. “This year’s been amazing,” he says, for three reasons: because of the people; because he’s been practising at home on a driving range he set up; and because the night before they had a cracker.
“I play every hit,” he says.
“The Eagles, Van Morrison, Elvis. Eagle Rock, Khe Sanh, the Aussie pub rock that people love. They want 60s, 70s, and 80s.
“I’ve done thousands of gigs. You don’t always win. Last night was an absolute winner.”
Windle says Grant – an “absolute legend” – was acting like a pirate at the gig, but when pressed on details says something akin to “what goes on tour, stays on tour”.
Nathan Down, 35, is a couple of decades or more younger than the general demographic. He wanted to take his 1982 series Land Rover on an adventure, so he drove it from Melbourne to Chasing the Sun. He says he could “talk to a brick wall” so “got along like a house on fire” with the rest of the crew.
“The fact we are all here due to a similar interest automatically connects us all,” he says.
“Each and every day is an adventure with 25 others that I’ll be friends [with] for life.”
Bea Wilmot says if you’re looking for manicured lawns, “don’t bother coming”.
“But if you want to experience the true Aussie outback, this course is for you.”
