Tee Time
Saturday November 29, 1997
BETWEEN dawn this morning and late afternoon, up to 100,000 Victorians will tee up, as Tiger Woods says, to "chase a little white ball around a park". The obsession we call golf, according to a recent government study, is now ranked the most popular competition sport in Victoria and, probably, Australia. It is even bigger than fishing, which has always assumed the mantle of our No.1 leisure-time pursuit.
Suddenly, golf holidays, like golf itself, are big business.
In Victoria alone, where, according to a study by the Department of Sport and Recreation, 320,000 people - 7 per cent of the population - play the sport (and a quarter of them more than once a week), the business of golf is worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
And it's popularity is snowballing. While more and more middle-aged Australians are lured to the game as a long, healthy walk in the park, the feats of the glamorous new American champion Tiger Woods and the fact that Australia now has the world's No.1 players in both men's and women's golf - Greg Norman and Carrie Webb - is inspiring hordes of younger players.
With an estimated 1.8 million Australians playing the game, the travel industry has begun to realise the enormous potential of the golf-holiday market. For the first time last year, Qantas Holidays added a golf-holidays brochure to its range. Both Qantas and Ansett now have golf specials permanently on offer.
In Melbourne, the Professional Golfers Association launched a franchised golf
travel company, PGA Travel, in 1995. Its primary aim was to provide travel services to professional golfers, but it now also sells golf holidays to the travel trade and the public, turning over millions of dollars a year.
However, the development of golf holidays in Australia in the past decade generally hasn't been for the benefit of Australians, but has been driven instead by the boom in tourism from Asia.
When Japanese holiday makers began landing in North Queensland in the 1980s, they found a golf wonderland, where the going rate for 18 holes on a lush tropical course was about 5 per cent of the price in Japan.
But development of dozens of new courses and golf resorts soon fixed that: from the Gold Coast to Port Douglas, it is now difficult to get on a resort course for less than $50 a game.
In fact, the Japanese and other Asian travellers don't seem to mind, as they are still able to play golf in Australia for a fraction of what it costs at home. There are even stories - perhaps apocryphal - about Japanese business people flying down to Cairns or Townsville on a Friday night, playing golf all weekend and returning to Tokyo overnight on Sunday, because it works out cheaper than indulging their love of the game at home.
Golf marketers argue that the new pricing regime in Queensland, in particular, simply brings Australian golf charges in line with the world trend. Anywhere in Asia, for example, a game of golf at less than $200 a round is a steal while, in America, rates start at about $US50 ($A72) on even the most basic course.
Still, Queensland golf holidays are popular among Victorians, mainly as a once-a-year, money's-no-object experience. After all, Queensland's sunny winter means you can play in perfect weather when you would be slushing around a course in the mud and the rain back home (although the downside is that, in Queensland in the summer wet season, it can be as wet under foot as Victoria in June).
However, you're assured of being able to play on a top-quality course and you don't necessarily have to empty the bank account - especially if you're driving north and don't have to factor air fares into the budget.
PGA Travel, for example, can sell you a night's resort-style accommodation at the Peter Thomson-designed Twin Waters course at Maroochydore on the Sunshine Coast, plus a round of golf and breakfast for $310 for two people - the same price as a one-night package to the Cape Schank course on the Mornington Peninsula.
At the acclaimed Sanctuary Cove resort on the Gold Coast, the price for two nights five-star accommodation, 54 holes, two breakfasts, cart hire and airport transfers is $389 per person, twin share. At nearly $800 all up for two, excluding air fares, it's pricey, but as a rare treat, many would judge it worth the money.
But, Victorians increasingly are discovering that the golf may be best of all in their own backyard, given the quality of courses and the prices.
Melbourne alone has more than 150 courses and Victoria in total has more than 350. And, in areas such as the Mornington Peninsula and along the Murray River, courses and resorts are pitching for your business as never before.
The Mornington Peninsula, for example, has dubbed itself the "Golf Coast", where golfing green fees along the "sandbelt", from St Kilda to Somers, start at less than $12 a round, and some of the better-known courses, such as the Dunes at Rye and Eagle Ridge at Rosebud, charge as little as $20.
But the big mover in the past few years for golf holidays has been the Murray River. When the Kennett Government allowed Victorian pubs and clubs to introduce poker machines, an industry along the Murray that had thrived for years faced collapse.
Huge clubs had grown up on the New South Wales side of the river, taking advantage of the fact that poker machines were prohibited south of the border.
Hundreds of busloads of Victorians each day would cross the river to have a flutter on the machines, enticed by the offer of cheap meals and liquor at the clubs. As an added extra, some clubs also built golf courses.
Now the Murray golf courses are the central attraction, and the region promotes itself as a year-round mecca for golfers. The infrastructure that was built to lure gamblers is now working to attract golfers and family holiday-makers: cheap meals and accommodation, activities for kids and, in towns such as Echuca, Swan Hill and Mildura, water sports and river cruising.
Rates as low as $40 per person per day (such as at Cobram-Barooga) including accommodation, a meal and unlimited golf are proving irresistible to southern Victorians when, even in July and August, the river region can offer mild days far from the madding crowds.
Even rates twice that - $349 for five nights accommodation (31/2-star on-course), unlimited golf and meals at the championship-standard Murray Downs course at Swan Hill, for example - are a bargain when compared to what you'll pay for a Queensland package.
Arguably the best-quality course on the river, with its velvet fairways and lightning-fast greens, Murray Downs attracts many of its devotees from Melbourne. Yet, it still must compete in an acutely price-conscious market. So green fees are only $27 and annual membership is $225 - just eight times the cost of a casual round - while the on-course accommodation, modern and verging on four-star, is less than $100 per room per night.
Indeed, Murray Downs has plenty of competition: from Albury, Yarrawonga, Cobram-Barooga (which also proclaims itself the Murray's number-one course) and family-friendly Rich River, just out of historic Echuca, to the courses further downstream - especially the picturesque Coomealla between Mildura and Wentworth, where kangaroos and goannas roam and kookaburras laugh the day away among the gums on the banks of the Murray. Most clubs offer on-course accommodation ranging from three to four star.
The courses between Echuca and Albury are only about three hours drive from Melbourne and, therefore, attract thousands of day-trippers from the south. Swan Hill (five hours drive from Melbourne) and Mildura (seven hours) are more for holidaymakers and generally offer better weather: even on the two-hour drive from Swan Hill to Echuca, the landscape changes from outback plains to lush river flats - and the temperature drops appreciably.
In one sense, however, all of the Murray courses are an opportunity gone begging: for a region with such terrific tourism potential, public transport is uniformly poor, with almost all former train services now axed in favor of buses. Only Albury (on the Sydney line) and Swan Hill have daily trains; Echuca has only two a week, while Mildura is an excruciating overnight bus ride from Melbourne.
CLOSER to home, however, there are plenty of surprises for Melburnians who've never ventured into the country on a golf trip.
Apart from the Mornington Peninsula, with more than 20 courses, there are no less than nine courses on the Bellarine Peninsula, with green fees ranging from $9 at the 12-hole Ocean Grove course to $50 at the upmarket Barwon Heads links. There's also an excellent 18 holes at the little-known Curlewis golf club near Drysdale, and one of the peninsula's oldest courses, Point Lonsdale, has a tight layout among the ti-tree and a reputation as the area's toughest golfing challenge. At both, a game of golf is about $20.
Further down the surf coast, Anglesea would win any award as the most picturesque course in Victoria. Alas, for the serious golfer, tourists have begun to discover the hundreds of kangaroos roaming its valleys in the hills behind the town and, on some holes, you have to weave through crowds of visitors photographing the local fauna.
Lorne also has a spectacular nine-hole course high above the town that is not only in excellent condition but also offers some of best views of Louttit Bay.
So that's it? Not at all. Just keep driving west and you'll strike course after country course with a reputation among golfers from the big smoke. "I'm constantly telling my friends," says former champion golfer, Peter Thomson, now a high-flying international course designer, "for a golf holiday, just go down the Western District to Colac, Hamilton, Casterton, Mount Gambier, Horsham, Mildura . . .
"There are some tremendous courses there and you're paying only a fraction of what you'd pay in town. You're eating well, meeting new friends and it's uncrowded . . . marvellous."
WHAT'S ON OFFER
MURRAY SAMPLER:
Cobram-Barooga (tel: 1800 062 334, 9am to 4pm): on-course accommodation per day - first person pays $51, second person pays $40, including unlimited golf, continental breakfast, $12 daily meal voucher, free ball, free drink. Accommodation valid Sunday to Thursday, golf Sunday to Friday.
Murray Downs, Swan Hill (tel: 0350 331 422): unlimited golf, daily cooked breakfast - two nights accommodation, $154 per person, twin share; five nights, $349 per person twin share.
AROUND THE WORLD:
PGA Travel (tel: 03 9551 7777, freecall: 1800 811 527) has brochures and flyers on hundreds of golfing holidays in Victoria, the rest of Australia, New Zealand and overseas, including organised trips to the major golf tournaments in the US. For example, Mirage Resort, Port Douglas, five nights, daily breakfast, four rounds including shared cart, unlimited practice balls, airport transfers - $1105 per person (excluding fares); Cypress Lakes, Hunter Valley, two nights, daily breakfast, two rounds including cart, golfers lunch pack - $395 per person (in a group of four - excluding fares); Joondalup Resort, Perth, four nights, three rounds including cart, midweek - $540 per person (excluding fares).
Among US offerings: the US Masters at Augusta, Georgia, in April 1998 from $4089 per person, twin share; US Open in San Francisco in June from $2837 per person; US PGA in August at Seattle from $2585 per person.
HEADING NORTH:
The Queensland Government Travel Centre (tel:13 18 01) has a comprehensive brochure on Queensland golf packages for courses and accommodation.
Current Qantas specials (tel: 13 14 15): Capricorn International Resort, Rockhampton, from $941 per person, including return fare, transfers, three nights twin share accommodation, daily breakfast, unlimited golf with cart, valid for departures from 6 January to 29 March; Royal Pines, Gold Coast, $794 per person, including fares, transfers, three nights twin share, daily breakfast and two rounds with cart (6 January to 29 March).
Current Ansett specials (tel: 13 13 44) include: Radisson Resort, Palm Meadows on the Gold Coast, $230 per person (excluding fares), two nights twin share accommodation, hot and cold buffet breakfast daily, one round with cart - or five nights and three rounds for $595 per person (valid 18 December to 31 March, subject to availability); Royal Pines, Gold Coast, $125 per person per night twin share (excluding fares), including buffet breakfast, one round.
GETTING STARTED
The Australian Golfer's Handbook (the latest is the 1996 edition, at $24.95) has details and contact numbers for every golf course in Australia, as well as an advertising section listing golf packages and accommodation providers through the country. It is available from the Australian Golfer's Union, 155 Cecil Street, South Melbourne, tel: 9699 7944, or at the AGU website: www.agu.aug.au
Contact Mornington Peninsula Tourism Forum for the Melbourne's Golf Coast brochure and details of local accommodation, at Box 249, Mornington 3931, tel: 0359 770 186.
Contact Geelong Otway Tourism for its Golfing Guide to Geelong, Bellarine Peninsula and the Surf Coast, at 17 Gheringhap Street, Geelong 3220, tel: 0352 232 588. It can also provide details of accommodation.
Also check for advertised specials in magazines such as the monthly Australian Golf Digest.
© 1997
Share This