"currently battling with my dear friend, the Silverstripe CMS" - 18 hours ago
"is thoroughly relaxed at another Irish farmhouse B&B, this time one run by a character and a half, Sharon Moore.... http://fb.me/Fd1zVe5z" - 1 day ago
"Is this the Nellie bunker you were talking about mate? Safely avoided I'm pleased to report http://fb.me/EHAvCmyU" - 2 days ago
Today 28 February marks the end of our second month on the road. (It’s not a leap year, I checked.) Only 10 months to go... We’ll be back at a desk pushing paper before we know it. Or not.
Anyway on this fine day we find ourselves in coastal Victoria – Lakes Entrance, to be precise. After a brisk 18 holes this morning we drove through from Narooma, on the New South Wales coast, some 500km away. And didn’t see one measly kangaroo. Despite the 65723 “be careful of kangaroo” road signs. It was like going to Disney world; seeing a dozen “Mickey Mouse this way” signs; and later learning that Mickey’s name is actually Sharon, and Sharon’s on maternity leave. A let down. Maybe the ‘roos were too busy to be hopping across the highway for tourist amusement. Maybe February 28 is the day they have their AGM, somewhere in the bush. Who knows. Regardless, it was a huge great disappointment not to see at least one marsupial. Just gum trees, dirt and gypsies.
Lakes Entrance must be some kind of holiday town, because there are more motels, hotels, caravan parks and camp grounds here than the whole of New Zealand put together. It’s got a bit of a Forrest Gump feel about it. Haven’t seen Bubba yet. Although there are a stack of fishing boats, and we did meet a bloke at the local hotel who could have been Bubba's twin brother. This lad was entirely genuine though; he and his labourer mates had travelled 40 minutes for a beer from the site they were working on, bless 'em. A bit rough around the edges, these boys were, but they'll all have mothers that love them and in any case they had good chat. Who knows what they thought of us...
Going back to those road signs – what on earth is with the tired driver signs here? Every 200 metres a sign asks you if you feel drowsy, or if you need a nap. “Have a powernap”, you’re told. Reading the dam things makes me tired; it’s like holding a gun to your head and telling you you need life insurance. Madness. Anyway.
Rewind to this morning, to Narooma. Fortunately thunder and lightning didn’t show up to the party, just drizzle (which made the fairways greasier than this evening’s fish and chips, testing our cart driving skills). Mike and I shot round the first 6 holes by ourselves, a couple of which were spectacular. The 3rd hole – Hogan’s Hole (which takes its namesake from Paul Hogan – aka Crocodile Dundee – who featured in a Winfield cigarette shoot in the water below, some years ago) – lived up to its billing. From the 7th onwards we were joined by Joe, a colourful character from Tipperaray, who came to the antipodes in 1959. Joe turned up in his red, fully stickered up cart, but without clubs – so Mike asked whether he’d be playing. “Nooo, sure ye woodn’t be gud enuf fir me” was the response, delivered with a charming Eire lilt.
The combination of Joe’s chat and fast wheels (a V8 petrol cart) was a winning one. The course was a ripper too, although after volatile weather conditions of late the fairways had seen better days. Who’d be a greenkeeper? Drought then monsoon. Monsoon then drought. How they had the greens in the condition they were remains a mystery as puzzling as the disappearance of the Marie Celeste, a feat as impressive as being able to touch your toes. Even Matt Cleary would’ve sunk a putt or two on ‘em.
Peter Jones Club Captain joined us for our last few holes. Charming chap if ever there was one, only too happy to fill us in on what it means to be a Narooma local (spoiled) and point us in the right direction. After he turned up I managed two birdies, so I’ve brought him with me. Against his will. I haven’t really, but I could have, and Peter himself said he’d love to be doing what we’re doing. So the invitation remains open my dear friend, if you happen upon this ramble.
Michael and I were privileged enough to be looked after by Joe and Peter in the clubhouse (and met another brilliant man by the name of Ray, they’re everywhere in these parts). They loaded us up with burgers and ginger beer before sending us on our way, along the not-so-kangaroo-infested Princes Highway. What a pleasure it was to spend the morning with such colourful characters at such a hospitable club. Go to Narooma. And if you’re looking for somewhere to retire, to spend your last days playing golf, it’s only $500 a year and it’s a top 100 course in Australia and I’m sure the sun shines most of the time and the burgers are magic.
I have a question for all our Australian readers: when are you going to reclaim your country from the Mosquito Race? They seem to rule the roost around here, and I’d personally like to see the back of them. If I scratch my leg any longer I’ll be bone carving. Dam things. At the other end of my lifestyle magazine-esque “Going up; Going down” list are flathead tails a local delicacy pulled straight from the Tasman Sea for the dining pleasure of lucky locals and tourists. When in Rome logic prevailed at the fush n chup shop, Mike and I opting for 4 said tails and 18 kilos of salty chups. A food coma I may have, but a happy one. Try flathead tails if you get the chance. Leave the chups though.
Tomorrow morning we’ll rise and play at Lakes Entrance, which looks like a beastly track that might chew us poor unsuspecting Kiwis up and spit us out. Violently. Especially if the wind keeps blowing. For the moment we’ve retired to the Riviera Backpackers, who’ve most generously put us up for the night. Slick digs, for a backpackers.
See y’all in March.
Day 58 saw us take on Mollymook golf course on the south coast of NSW. After an early start and farewell to the Wilsons it took about an hour to drive from Nowra to Mollymook. Once there we were greeted by the local mozzies who quickly started feasting on our fresh kiwi blood. Fortunately, we were also joined by two local school teachers, Jeff and Ian, who after watching us itch and squirm for a couple of holes helped fend off the crowds of mozzies with a spot of repellent. Crucial.
Mollymook GC is a long and testing course carved out of gum trees. When I say carved out of gum trees, they did not cut down any more than needed and the course played pretty tight. It was fair to say that Jamie hit his fair share of trees today particularly on the first few holes. After playing a few short courses so far in Australia, Mollymook was refreshingly long and required good ball striking to score well. There was no fudging it. Coupled with the length of the course (6200m) it was also very hilly and come the 16th – a par four with a 30m deep gully short of the green - Jamie’s chicken legs were starting to feel the pinch. My putting stroke had also started to feel the pinch as my 4th three putt of the day on the prior hole had sent my blood pressure a few notches north. Golf can be an infuriating game.
Mollymook is a very natural golf course. It capitalises on both the gum trees and creeks (which is these parts of the world are called dams) that have been on the property a long time. The back nine has a great stretch of holes from 11 to 13. The 11th is a par four which features a very long green that slopes off on the right to a huge lake (dam) which undoubtedly catches many a weak slice hit by the local club golfer. The 12th is a picturesque par three over the aforementioned lake (dam) where today whilst standing on the tee amongst the bush we could hear the Kookaburras yacking away. And the 13th is a great par five which chicane’s through the trees. An accurate and long drive will catch a down slope and leave about 220m into the green which is protected by water short and right. The green has a severe slope from back to front. Fair to say it was the home to another of my dreaded putting escapades – use your imagination.
The match was hard fought with JP and Ian taking on Jeff and I. Through 9 it was square but following a number of pars to Ian playing off a 22 handicap it was quickly all over 4/3. The locals were great company yarning about the local area and their other passion – surfing.
After the round we jumped in the car and boosted to Narooma where the last round of February will occur. I think I am really struggling in the monthly stableford competition despite sneaking in today with 30 points against JP’s 28. I am finding that I have started to make a lot of bogey’s but am not having many shocking holes. I don’t know what that says about my golf but it seems to consistently result in unsatisfying scores in the low 80’s. I am very much in the swing of golf now – can’t imagine NOT playing golf for a day. In the groove and it is great.
M
Kia Ora. Check out the video below. Jamie and I have just had two incredible nights with Andrew and Ros Wilson. Once upon a time my father was Andrew's best man. Despite seeing very little of them since I was a tot we had a special couple of nights catching up and sharing stories. The red wine (both locally and other Aussie varieties) was not bad either. Two special days in Nowra that we wont forget.
Greetings fellow global golf travel voyeurs.
Matt Cleary here, I’m the sports journalist these two wandering golf adventure chancers have been mentioning in previous despatches and I’ve been charged with writing this Special Guest Blog because the boys are off to the town of Nowra and it’s possible the town of Nowra is not yet connected with the global interconnected “web” of computers known as “The Internet”.
Actually Nowra does have “The Internet”, it’s three hours south of Sydney and a nice enough town if you like pubs full of toothless fisherman, man-eating sharks and race riots, none of which is true though there are sharks at nearby Jervis Bay because they breed there and, presumably, make shark love. Good luck to them.
So! The boys and myself and Luke “Elvis” Elvy from Fox Sports a television program that’s all about sport as is right and proper played golf St.Michael’s in Sydney’s east a course founded by Catholics in 1925 because they weren’t allowed to play elsewhere such were the times, or maybe it’s because they wanted to play with other Catholics, or maybe something else I have no idea I made it all up. But there is some historical thing about the club’s catholic roots that you could look up if you were of a mind. And good luck to you.
So! We played St.Michael’s which is a champion golf course with superb fairways, greens harder than a very hard maths test and rough so thick that if you walk into it it might actually attack you like a triffid or that plant that ate that house on Doctor Who a show that was on in the olden days or at least a bit before these two Kiwi were alive, I would warrant. But it’s pretty rough rough the rough, and more than once the Kiwis looked for their balls fearful of horrible gurgling death by red-bellied black snake and/or bears which drop from the trees like furry ninja assassins. Someone might have warned them of these things when they were 4-up with eight to play.
Unfortunately for Elvis and I who formed the Australian half of this Second Bledisloe Cup encounter, the lads didn’t go looking often, and dusted us 6-and-5 in the 4BBB match-play second-ball counts format. Unhappy days, though given I was able to fill them full of beer an hour after they got off the plane on Saturday and teamed myself with a 62-year-old South African who swings the club cack-handed and plays off six like Jesus would if he were six-marker, it’s actually 1-all in Bledisloe Cup standings and the three-Test series is very much alive and will be concluded when the boys are back in Sydney in April thereabouts when Elvis gets us on some flash place on the North Shore of Sydney Town such is the man’s unparalelled power.
St.Michael’s? Superb piece of real estate. Holes either wind through the bush – dominant organisms: witch-finger shrubs and ti tree – or roll by the Pacific Ocean or is it the Tasman Sea I can never tell it’s all bloody water. Anyway it’s a ripper St.Mick’s and you should play in their Thursday Open Comp when you’re in the eastern suburbs of Sydney because it’s a ripper. And for forty bucks ($NZ427.50) it represents Top Value.
The boys played pretty well, roughly to the handicaps they claim are there’s but which they really should be arrested for given they appear to be crimes against burglary for which they probably should be sent to a penal colony like Australia once was in chains and then whipped and put in a gulag and made to knit their own food from cat hair. Just putting it out there.
But actually they did play well. Jamie hits a big high hook that’s like a boomerang that comes halfway back while Mike spanks a two-iron like Michael Jackson used to spank his huge troop of monkeys. (Ha!) But what won the lads this encounter is that the bastards, particularly the funny Scottish one, putted like Gary Player putting to save his quite considerable fortune which meant Elvis and I had buy them drinks after the game such are the ways of men.
The second nine Elvis’s Fox Sports camera crew turned up and followed us around which caused a brief cessation in the beating. A bigger case of stage fright than a 17-year-old in the lavatory of that pub in Once Were Warriors. “Eek! Too much weights and not enough speed work!” said the boys or something like it, as Elvis and I took the tenth hole after I spanked a quite magnificent birdie and the boys blocked their approach shots further right than Pauline Hanson. Four-down and the Aussies were back.
But from there it was all Kiwi and Elvis and I were done n dusted like so many versions of Australian road-kill, a particular piece of Australiana the boys are going to be seeing a fair bit of in the next couple of months as they continue their extraordinary odyssey. (And just as an aside: How about this trip! Who are these people!?)
Back at the golf and in the ways of men we went double-or-nothing on the last five holes and despite going one-up had to win the last hole to halve that particular match, which we did so we didn't buy them sandwiches as well. But then I did buy them a sandwich anyway because they look thinner than the half-a-dozen lob-wedges I skulled across St.Michael’s superb hard greens.
Jamie had to eat the Weet-Bix.
Afterwards! the boys were interviewed by Elvis on the balcony of St.Michael’s with the Tasman Sea views and you’ll see the whole shebang if you tune into The Golf Show on Tuesday night at 7:30 but only if you live in the country of Australia which the boys are quite enjoying despite taking money off good honest journalists like me and Elvis who plays off six but did not today no-one knows why not even Jesus or Gary Player or Jake the Mus.
This arvo they’re off to Nowra like I writ before, and then Narooma, and then Lakes Entrance, three coastal country towns where the sheep aren’t nervous because they’re more dairy farming communities which also have fishing and tourism industries that prop up the local economies.
Three nice little golf courses too.
And bye for now.
Today’s blog is a bit unusual, in that Michael and I have been asked to refrain from mentioning where we played. The club we played at is media shy to the nth degree. So what is about to follow is less than the complete picture, but you dear reader will just have to use your imagination.
The course was an absolute stunner. 3 hours since we walked off the course and I’ve still got a grin on my face. There were more bunkers than I’ve had hot dinners; the greens were immaculate and difficult to read; each hole had its own charms, no two being the same; and the atmosphere at this place was surreal. Looking up the 18th fairway at the clubhouse, it felt like you were standing on one of golf’s great stages. I’m struggling for superlatives. The fairways were like carpet. Nice, Egyptian carpet.
Going back to all those bunkers I mentioned...I got in a lot of them. This caused some damage to my score, but every time it happened I chuckled to myself, because I remembered something our friend Roy (from Day 50) said to me, which went something like this: “when most people get into bunkers, they curse; but when I go into a bunker, I think “GREAT”, another chance to practice my bunker shots!”. His enthusiasm was infectious, and his cheerful words stayed with me. Which was just as well – because had I let today’s sandpit activities get to me I could have ended up in a bit of a state. In the event I had the time of my life.
For the first time since we arrived in Australia, a couple we asked to join us kindly agreed. Finally! On each of the past few days we have asked people if they’d like to join us, and without exception the answer has been “NO” – either straight up, or followed quickly with an explanation (“e.g. we’re talking business”). Maybe we look dodgy? Or maybe it's just not done in these parts? Anyway it was worth the wait. We met John Taylor and his wife, Hana (originally from the Czech Republic) who were up from Melbourne, en route to our very own Aotearoa (for a golf tour). John plays at Royal Melbourne, and was the Captain of a Merchant Ship. The bloke was in his 80s, but you never would have known (had Hana not tactfully told me). Both of them looked, and came across generally, as much younger than their years – and Michael and I thoroughly enjoyed their company on the way around. We’re planning to meet up with them in Melbourne in a few weeks’ time, hopefully for another game of golf!
Oh I almost forgot. Michael, my good friend, putted from the fairway, just off the green, into...a bunker! Thankfully he saw the funny side of it (I certainly did). If only I’d had the video camera out. What might have been a par turned into a double bogey, a debacle that aggravated Mike’s already irritated demeanour – as he hit the ball well and scored poorly. His 3 birdies could have easily been 5 or 6. We both left a couple of putts out on the course too, the ball having danced around the edge on several occasions. But no matter. In the end it was 83 each (yielding 34 and 32 points (J & M) respectively). We both flushed it, but on occasions got into the wrong spot, from where par is nothing but a dream.
The most vivid example I can recall was a par 3, on which I knocked a 5 iron into the greenside bunker. The thing sloped steeply both ways, and I ended up on the (down)slope facing towards the green. The lip was 8 feet high, and the slope from the lip to the pin sharply downhill. I just smiled and wished myself good luck, then took a double bogey 5 (the first of 3 in a row, along the back 9). False fronts on several greens also wrought havoc with the scorecard; twice I thought a pure iron shot had been struck within one putt distance of the hole, and twice my ball rolled 15 metres back towards me. Drat.
Another feature of this course that sticks in my mind was the variety. There were a good few short par 4s, none of which were a giveaway. The stronger par 4s (in length terms) were a treat too. And most of them ran in different directions, preventing wind direction from being an overriding influence. All holes were well bunkered, and - as far as I can remember - had Himalaya-like greens. Thrilling stuff. The last feature I will mention (I promise) was this: on the par 5s, the front of the greens slope away from the tee, towards the back of the green, making approach shots that much more difficult. Sounds simple, but an effective way to mitigate unbridled power.
Anyway...I could wax lyrical for hours about Private Course X, but I’m sure you’re getting as bored as I am tired. Following golf we’ve had a lovely Chinese meal with Michael’s relatives, and in the morning we’re up at the crack of dawn to play St. Michaels (our game will be filmed for Fox Sports, so hopefully we don't get the shanks). Day 55 was a jaffa of the highest order – in terms of both the golf course itself and the company we enjoyed on the way around. Thanks to Private Course X and to John and Hana for joining us – one for the scrapbook.
JP
Shinnecock
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