It’s a five-star golf trip from beginning to end. The Cessna Conquest C441 is a compact but comfortable aircraft that seats eight passengers. It can fly at altitudes up to 35,000 feet and at a cruising speed of 290 knots. In clear weather the trip is as scenic as it is efficient, and spotting the two golf courses from the air as you fly over the southern edge of Bass Strait whets the appetite further. All flights are non-stop and the Conquest requires only 700 metres on which to land, so the 1,200-metre Barnbougle strip is amply long.

The sun sets over the picturesque short par-3 4th hole at Lost Farm.

Stuart Catterson, managing director of TGTC and a 25-year veteran of the corporate travel and hospitality industry, says their company recognised that flights to Barnbougle from Moorabbin airport in suburban Melbourne had been operating for a number of years, but getting flights leaving from Sydney “off the ground” was proving to be trickier. Earlier this year TGTC partnered with Armidale-based Edwards Aviation, which proved to be the last piece of the logistical puzzle when it came to flying to Barnbougle out of Sydney.

The par-3 15th is played beneath the Lost Farm clubhouse, which affords views over the course and beach.

“It’s about time,” Catterson says, uttering a sentence that holds true both ways. “A lot of people just haven’t got the available time for airline check-ins and going through security, etc. And I think there’s a little bit of prestige behind it. A lot people when they go on golfing holidays tend to invest a fair bit of money in it because it’s their one and only time in a year when they get away and do something that they’re passionate about. So people do tend to spend a dollar or two extra to get exactly what they want, and we feel that this product would tick a lot of people’s boxes as far as it doesn’t mean adding on three hours either way. In terms of prestige, touring this way is also keeping a step ahead of everybody else.”