The Bellarine Peninsula was a very different place to play golf when I first visited there in 1998.
Back then, it was a far more rural landscape you encountered from the outskirts of Geelong in the west through to Queenscliff on its eastern tip. Once the last of Geelong’s suburbia had disappeared from your rear-vision mirror, there were vast areas of native bush, grazing land, wineries, and occasional small villages connected by a network of narrow roads and lanes.
There were less golf courses, and of those layouts already in the ground there was only one that could boast a place in a Top-100 in Australia list.
Today, 25 years on, some of those small villages have seemingly doubled in size, the roads have improved, and the Bellarine’s golfing stocks put it among the best destinations in the country, with six courses ranked among the nation’s best.
The arrival and resounding success of the Vic Open has had a ripple effect on Bellarine golf. Since the event – with men’s and women’s championships played concurrently – moved to the beautiful Thirteenth Beach Links in 2013, it has grown significantly, and its unprecedented format copied on other tours elsewhere in the world.
With the championship attracting a world spotlight once a year, the spin-off has been greater attention being paid to the region and its other attractions, particularly its golf courses.
Just as it was in 1998, Barwon Heads Golf Club should be the cornerstone of every golfer’s trip to the Bellarine.
The layout, which measures a meagre 5,856 metres from the championship tees, continues to hold its own against the technological advances in golf equipment and remains as challenging today as it was when Royal Melbourne Golf Club professional Victor East laid out his creation and saw it open for play in 1922.
Many describe Barwon Heads as a links course, but the majority of the holes are more reminiscent of those found in the Melbourne Sandbelt. In truth it really is only the opening six holes that really fit the links course billing. These holes, across a narrow road from the historical clubhouse, are brilliant, while the holes from the 7th (alongside the clubhouse) to the 18th are flanked by sometimes dense clumps of ti-tree and the occasional Cypress Pine.
The time-honoured layout features shots that keep bringing golfers back. Whether it’s the huge, split-level green at the 4th where the par-3 plays like two different holes depending on the flag’s location, or the over-the-road tee shot on the par-4 7th or the rough-and-tumble 9th fairway, which halts to descend a ridge before flattening towards the green.
The charm of the second nine is magnified by the simple but sinister 13th hole, a downhill par-3 of 130 metres with no hazard in sight and only wind and a pulpit-style green to defend itself. And you simply must play the adjoining little par-3 course. There is no more fun way to play golf than with a single ball, a putter, a few wedges and nothing more. Everything about Barwon Heads oozes class and tradition in a truly special setting.
Just around the corner, Thirteenth Beach Golf Links gives golfers two options: the much-vaunted Beach Course and the ever-maturing Creek layout.
The Beach Course at Thirteenth Beach brought world-class golf to the region and, rather than complementing its classically designed neighbour, Barwon Heads, it challenges as the top-ranked layout on the peninsula.
Thirteenth Beach was the vision of entrepreneur Duncan Andrews, who fell in love with the coastal strip of sand dunes at first glance. Having already developed The Dunes Links on the Mornington Peninsula, Andrews commissioned the design genius behind that layout – Tony Cashmore – to craft a course that would incorporate as much of the rugged dune landscape as possible.
While the opening four holes cover relatively flat land, the excitement builds on the 5th tee as the layout begins its journey across some of the best natural terrain for golf in Victoria. Cashmore, following a minimalist philosophy in creating the Beach Course, located some fabulous tee and green sites among the dunes, which have, in turn, produced some memorable holes.
Arguably the highlight of the Beach Course is the quartet of par-3s. The 3rd is a long, exposed brute, while the 7th features a green complex that will help feed the ball nearer some flag positions but away from others. The 12th is similar in look to No.7 but balls tend to react differently on the putting surface, before the jewel in the crown at 16. There’s something so infuriating about a 113-metre hole that can be impossible. My first round on the Beach course gave us a downwind shot here, which is perhaps the worst wind direction as there is nothing to stop a pitch that’s sailing on the wind and no scope for a running approach. Only a perfectly struck and perfectly judged wedge shot will pass this little test.
The opening of the adjoining Creek Course in 2004 turned Thirteenth Beach into a golf destination in its own right. Designed by Cashmore in collaboration with six-time major winner Sir Nick Faldo, the Creek has none of the Beach’s duneland but nonetheless it’s a course filled with interesting strategies and good holes, giving it a definite Melbourne Sandbelt feel.
The green complexes are superb with closely mown swales and hollows nestled alongside creative greenside bunkering that cuts the fringes of each putting surface, like you will find on the Sandbelt. The dramatic slopes created off the edge of the bunkers add to the excitement of putting on the true rolling greens.
The Sandbelt is also full of world-class holes under 300-metres and the 9th on the Creek Course matches the quality of the best of them. The fairway is littered with bunkers on a direct line to the hole and whether trying to drive it onto the green or play safely short of left, it’s always demanding of some sort of decision.
If you need any more reason to sample these two gems, here’s another – both courses are ranked within the best 25 of Australia’s Top-100 Public Access Courses, as listed by Golf Australia magazine, with the Creek at No.23 and the Beach at No.6.
Heading east from Barwon Heads, it is a 20-minute drive to the newest addition to the Bellarine Peninsula golfing landscape – Lonsdale Links.
‘Newest’ is a little misleading when you consider Lonsdale Golf Club has been in existence for more than a century. However, the current course iteration you will find, while covering most of the same wonderful golfing terrain, is vastly different to the club’s old course.
The course was extensively redesigned and rebuilt by Ogilvy, Cocking & Mead (OCM – Geoff Ogilvy, Mike Cocking and Ashley Mead) before reopening for play in December 2020. In January this year, Lonsdale Links made its Top-100 Public Access Courses in Australia ranking debut at No.8.
The club’s previous incarnation was a good course but the rough diamond that it was, has been polished, buffed and polished again to produce the high-ranking layout you will find today.
The OCM design ebbs and flows across gently undulating coastal dunes, while holes on the lower reaches sit alongside salt marshes and wetlands near Lake Victoria. It is a short par-70 of just 5,505-metres from the tips but the links aspects of the course test better players, while allowing the rest of us to simply have fun. If having fun was the sole underlying purpose behind Lonsdale’s new design, then OCM has nailed the brief, especially the holes that have been inspired by some of the world’s best holes.
In the early 1900s, famed course architects CB Macdonald and Seth Raynor created a series of template designs, based on the strategies of the world’s best holes. OCM has used elements of those templates and the holes that inspired them at Lonsdale Links.
Half of the holes at Lonsdale have a template connection to holes found on the National Golf Links of America, North Berwick and The Old Course at St Andrews.
Perhaps the most spectacular of these is the 165-metre par-3 12th and its dramatic putting surface, which gives rise to then hole’s name, ‘Thumbprint’. Inspired by the 16th at Sleepy Hollow Country Club in the U.S, Thumbprint looks like a giant thumb has pressed down the middle of the putting surface, leaving a series of different tiers and ridges across the green.
Elsewhere, the 115-metre par-3 14th is a shorter reverse version of the original ‘Redan’ hole – the 15th at North Berwick in Scotland – while the famed ‘Road Hole’ at St Andrews has inspired the green complex of Lonsdale’s short par-4 16th, where the green is protected by a deep pot bunker and an out-of-bounds fence.
OCM didn’t create perfect copies of famous holes but were ultimately dictated to by the Lonsdale terrain when inspired to use an element of Macdonald’s templates. Mixed in between these ‘templates’ are further fun and challenging holes, that might become the template inspirations for course designers in years to come.
At this point in any golf tour of the Bellarine many might be inclined to head north in search of more golfing gold on the peninsula. Heading off from Lonsdale Links, those in the know will turn right, instead of left, at the Bellarine Highway intersection bound for the most underrated layout in the region.
The term ‘hidden gem’ is often overused, but in this instance, it fits the Queenscliff Golf Club like a glove. If you didn’t know this course existed, you would have turned left after leaving Lonsdale. Anyone who turns right knows how good this little-known course is, and how much potential there is for it to one day become a Top-100 ranked course. “Tell me more!” I hear you say.
Firstly, perhaps one reason behind the relative anonymity (at least outside the region) of the Queenscliff course is the high security that exists at the entry to the island and golf club.
The club sits on Department of Defence land on Swan Island. Before you are allowed to cross the one-kilometre bridge and breakwater to the course, a security guard will take note of your car registration and ask for identification.
The formalities are all worth it for what lies ahead.
Golf has been played here since 1907 when a five-hole course was laid out across part of the island that had been created by drifting sands. The course was extended to 12 holes in 1922, 15 holes in 1954 and eventually 18 holes in 1961.
Queenscliff is perhaps best described as a links-sandbelt hybrid with several holes running out to or along the edges of the Island. The site has some gentle undulations perfect for golf and a collection of gorgeous cypress trees that seem to find their way into the scene of the game’s grandest venues.
Above all, Queenscliff is a bloody fun course to play.
Many reckon its best hole is also its hardest. The 387-metre 6th hole, a par-4 with a saddle-shaped fairway has a green positioned in a corner near the edge of the island. The next is a fantastic short par-4. The 279-metre two-shotter plays along the scrubby shoreline of Swan Bay to the left and there’s not much angle for the pitch to the green if your drive veers too far right, near wetlands and a lone fairway bunker 180 metres from the tee.
For mine, the back nine is jam-packed with Queenscliff’s highlights with the quartet of holes starting with the exciting par-5 12th is worth the green fee alone. Wetlands flank the left edge of the fairway of the 473-metre 12th, and there are seven large bunkers on the hole – three of them greenside.
My favourite comes at the next. The 330-metre 13th could have been plucked straight off one of the best courses in the Melbourne Sandbelt. It is a beautiful short par-4 where the wide fairway doglegs right around a cavernous bunker and towards an angled peanut-shaped green, pinched narrow front and back by two deep bunkers.
Will the secret of Queenscliff get out? It probably already has, just as it has for Portarlington Golf Club, a little slice of the Melbourne Sandbelt on the north shore of the Bellarine Peninsula.
Portarlington celebrated its centenary in 2009 but its finest years have been the ones following that milestone with the course losing its underrated or ‘hidden gem’ status as it made its debut in Golf Australia magazine’s Top-100 Public Access Courses of Australia ranking, coming in at No.63.
Portarlington’s ascent to nationallyranked course has been a long and measured journey from its decades as a nine-hole sand scrapes layout.
The course expanded to 18 holes in the early 1960s and, after purchasing adjoining land, the club approached the former curator at Point Lonsdale Golf Club, Eric Horne, to design the layout. He did the work for free, and the full 18-hole layout was opened for play in 1963. He returned nearly a decade later to revise the layout when additional land became available. Further redesign was made again in the early 1980s.
But the most significant changes to the layout came after the appointment in 1996 of consulting course architect, Tony Cashmore, who would go on to create the highly acclaimed Thirteenth Beach courses and The Dunes Links.
Bit-by-bit over the next two decades, Cashmore oversaw his vision for the Portarlington layout, which included converting all fairways to Santa Ana couch, the rebuilding of several greens as well as the reshaping of fairways and bunkers.
All of Cashmore’s extensive changes certainly improved the quality of golf at Portarlington. But it is the subtle design tweaks carried out since 2020, under the eye of consulting architects Neil Crafter and Paul Mogford, as well as the outstanding presentation – particularly the fairways – of the course that has seen Portarlington reach new heights.
Once you get into a round here it’s easy to see why it is a slice of Sandbelt golf. Several bunkers would look right at home at Kingston Heath or Metro, while the green complexes and occasional stands of imposing pine trees are reminiscent of what you might find at Victoria Golf Club.
One such hole that clearly fits the Sandbelt comparison is the 330-metre par-4 12th. This is a wonderful risk and reward hole where players looking for an easier second shot into the green need to navigate their way along the left edge of the fairway, which features three large bunkers and out-of-bounds just beyond the tree line. The green sits diagonally to your approach with big bunkers short and long of the wide putting surface. Adding to the challenge of the approach shot is the well-trimmed drop-off slopes left and right, which will repel any mishit into deeper grass well away from the green.
Heading southwest along the north edge of the peninsula towards Drysdale you will find Clifton Springs Golf Club, which boasts some fantastic views across picturesque Corio Bay.
Golf has been played at Clifton Springs since 1909 – the same year neighbouring club Portarlington opened for play– on a nine-hole course created by renowned Melbourne professional Richard ‘Dick’ Banks. Banks was prolific in laying out courses across Victoria in the pre-World War I years and he worked on the first course incarnations of Woodlands, Cardinia Beaconhills and Phillip Island Golf Clubs to name but a few.
Much of the history of the years that followed Banks’ work has been lost and the current club, complete with 18 holes, was formed in 1970.
When Banks laid out his design, it was a links course with few, if any trees. Today, the scenic bay views, for the most part, are through the trees. The 13th, 15th and 17th holes all play towards the bay, while the 16th and 18th tees sit atop a cliff overlooking the aquamarine water.
At 18, a wild shot to the right risks sliding into oblivion over the edge. Veering left is a little better, as several sprawling trees block the approach to a green framed by a huge fig tree left of the surface.
So, while the inward nine at Clifton Springs holds the layout’s better holes and the closers get your attention in more ways than one, it’s important to not overlook the start. Four of the course’s first five holes carry a stroke index of five or lower, meaning the tough holes hit you early in the round.
Related Articles
World Exclusive: Trump’s Indonesian Tee-off
Travel Feature: Golf’s Sunny Side
