Tropicana Nov-Dec 2017 #116 Celebrating the Classics

THE SWING
ouldn’t go left here mate,” my caddie
Phil warns me as I observe the view
from the tee at the fourth hole of the
Nullarbor Links. “That’s death adder
country over there.”
With his sun-weathered face,
gruff drawl and regulation singlet and sandals combo, my
caddie Phil is the epitome of the no-nonsense Australian.
As a result, I’ve come to value his frank assessments of
play on the world’s longest golf course, a 1000-kilometre
track that extends between the towns of Ceduna in South
Australia and Kalgoorlie in Western Australia and will
take me three days to complete.
Disconcerted, but somewhat more focused, I
concentrate on hitting the fairway – a crusty expanse
of parched dirt. I catch my drive sweetly, but it catches
a pockmark on the acne-scarred face of the ground and
diverts at a right angle into a (presumably) reptile-infested
thicket. “Best hit another one,” says Phil. Such is the way of
things on a course that eschews traditional golfing terrain
for the barely charted vastness of the Aussie outback.
Named after the region it inhabits, the Nullarbor Plain,
the course proceeds through one of the most desolate
landscapes on the planet.
John Eyre, the English explorer who, in 1841, became
the first outsider to cross the Nullarbor Plain, didn’t
have many good things to say about the area. “A hideous
anomaly, a blot on the face of nature,” he called it. Eyre
was exaggerating. There were no roadhouses in those days,
and two of his companions were murdered during the
expedition. Nevertheless, the Nullarbor remains something
that you pass through on your way to somewhere else.
What, mused roadhouse owners in the area, could tempt
passing drivers to stop and spend their dollars?
Enter Bob Bongiorno, the former manager of a roadhouse
in the settlement of Balladonia (population 20). What was
required, he concluded over a few bottles of wine with his
mate Alf Caputo, was a global headline-grabber. And so the
Nullarbor Links, the world’s longest golf course, was born.
With the help of a government grant, a pleasantly
soused dream became reality. Robert Stock, a pro from
Manchester, England, sketched out plans for the new holes
using Google Maps. The rest of the budget was spent on
AstroTurf greens and tees as well as some rudimentary
land clearing. Nine years after that fateful night on the
vino, Australian pro Len Thomas gave the Links its first
test run, shooting a 78 (that means ‘very good’ in golf-ese)
that still stands as the course record.
HOLE 11: 90-MILE
STRAIGHT
TM | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017
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