It’s quite funny, really, that without one potato farmer taking an almighty risk, an entire state would almost certainly be without one of its strongest sources of tourism.
Then again, isn’t that how most great things start, with seemingly ordinary people finding the courage and determination to nurture what may seem like an unlikely idea into reality?
Our story begins 32 years ago, when Richard Sattler and his wife, Sally, purchased 15,000 acres of potato and cattle-grazing land near the seaside town of Bridport in north-east Tasmania. The farm, with its dry and sandy soil, was just about perfect for the 5,000 head of cattle and thousands of tons of potatoes. But the rolling dunes along the coastline didn’t offer much in the way of farming and, aside from their visual appeal, were effectively deemed useless, at least in the eyes of our farming protagonist.
Fast forward to 2001, however, and the Sattlers’ landline was working overtime, as 23-year-old entrepreneur Greg Ramsay desperately tried to make contact with the owners of the windswept property. The golf enthusiast had just returned home to Tasmania after 12 months abroad in Scotland – where he caddied at St Andrews and worked in the whiskey industry – and had identified the coastal dunes on Sattler’s farm as having the potential to become an idyllic place for links golf.
After his phone calls fell on deaf ears, Ramsay decided to take matters into his own hands and arrived at the farm unannounced, eventually managing to convince Sattler to consider the possibility of golf holes on his hilly dunes.
Twelve months later, Ramsay had assembled three huge names in the world of golf – renowned course architect, Tom Doak, former professional golfer turned architect, Mike Clayton, and American course developer, Mike Keiser, of Bandon Dunes fame – who each told Sattler that his land had the potential to house something world-class, so long as it was built properly. And this would, of course, take money.
Sattler had worked on numerous developments throughout Tasmania before – but golf was something completely foreign to him, and despite the aforementioned experts lauding his land, he couldn’t help but wonder if its isolated geographical position would limit its appeal.
It’s not hard to imagine Sattler looking out over those vast sandy dunes after another long day of work on his farm, wondering whether or not to pull the trigger on the project. You can almost hear the evening winds whipping in off Bass Strait, whispering to him over and over again, “If you build it, they will come."
“There was huge doubt,” Sattler told Golf Australia magazine. “Every day I woke up and thought ‘I’ve got to be crazy’. I worried about where on earth golfers would come from to play, whether the course would be as good as we were told it could be and whether people would come and play in this sort of climate. There was doubt on just about every angle.”
“Barnbougle absolutely put us on the map and god bless the potato farmer Richard Sattler. He took that risk and it’s truly outstanding what they’ve done there.” – Tourism Tasmania Chief Executive Officer, John Fitzgerald.
Everything seems obvious in hindsight, of course, but Sattler needn’t have worried. Barnbougle Dunes – his field of dreams – was officially unveiled to the world in December 2004 and within six months of opening, it was ranked inside the top-50 golf courses on the planet.
“There was a lot of confidence before it opened because of the great design, but no one really knew if people would make the trip this far away to come and play the course,” Sattler said.
“In those early days, I remember one of the cable TV channels from the US came out to look at the course and they started off by saying, ‘Here we are at the end of civilised earth’. I thought ‘jeez’ and that made me feel a little bit negative (laughs). But a huge portion of our business comes from international visitors.”
Those global visitors have, for nearly 17 years now, been greeted by 18 holes of pure, unadulterated fun. Doak and Clayton’s design is incredibly impressive and presents one visually spectacular hole after another, as it meanders its way through and over dunes that were once considered useless.
The success of Barnbougle Dunes – which was ranked third in Australia’s Top-100 Courses for 2020 by this magazine – ultimately led to the creation of its next-door neighbour in 2010.
Barnbougle Lost Farm, designed by leading American course architect Bill Coore, complements its counterpart perfectly and has consistently featured in the upper echelons of national and international rankings.
The 20-hole layout at Lost Farm, which can be found amongst tall sand dunes east of its elder sibling, places a premium on good strategy tee-to-green, while the routing takes you to each point of the compass.
“Every time I play Bill Coore’s masterpiece on Bass Strait, I find some ground feature or pin position I had never previously noticed. It’s a close-run thing for the title of ‘Best Course at Bridport’, but for the fine details of Lost Farm raise it slightly above its rugged, dramatic sister next door,” Scott Warren, Golf Australia magazine Top-100 judge, said.
The two courses at Barnbougle eventually became the catalyst for an explosion of golf tourism in Tasmania. Their success provided much-needed confidence for investors and developers alike, who were essentially given all the proof they needed that the cul-de-sac of the world had the ability to attract global golfers.
“Barnbougle absolutely put us on the map and god bless the potato farmer Richard Sattler. He took that risk and it’s truly outstanding what they’ve done there,” Tourism Tasmania Chief Executive Officer, John Fitzgerald, said.
Five years after the creation of Lost Farm, in 2015, Mike DeVries and Darius Oliver designed another world-beater for Tasmania on the remote, picturesque King Island.
Cape Wickham Links wasted no time in bursting its way onto just about every golfer’s bucket list, with its stunning location, diverse landscape, impressive design and clever routing each combining to see it quickly become Australia’s No.1 ranked public access course.
The immensely beautiful setting often overshadows the truly magnificent design of the layout, with many believing that on its day, Cape Wickham tops Royal Melbourne as the greatest golf course in Australia.
“Now fully grown in, Cape Wickham is putting a great case forward to be included in the argument as the best course in Australia. The firm fully fescue surfaces make it the best conditioned course in the country, especially around the green sites where every club in your bag is an option to play short game shots with,” Rich Macafee, Golf Australia magazine Top-100 judge, said.
Forty-five kilometres south of Cape Wickham lies the tremendous Graeme Grant-designed Ocean Dunes, which opened for play in 2016 and was ranked sixth in this magazine’s list of Top-100 Public Access Courses for 2021.
Ocean Dunes lays claim to some of the best seaside holes in the country – such as the opening quartet and the 10th and 11th holes – and presents a strategic challenge that is likely to test any level of player. Its inland holes are to be praised too, however, boasting superb views across the property and beyond, as they examine every area of your game.
King Island’s gems and the two offerings at Barnbougle are already working in tandem to attract tens of thousands of golfers to Tasmania every year – but several key people believe these numbers will only increase, as further developments are completed throughout southern areas of the state.
Even established layouts like Royal Hobart Golf Club and nearby Tasmania Golf Club have undertaken major redesign projects in recent times to modernise their layouts and take advantage of the growing interest tourists have to play golf in Tasmania.
“The Tasmanian Visitor Survey says that we’re attracting about 22,000 golf visitors per year. Once the southern courses have been completed, we would expect those numbers to grow significantly in the next five to 10 years,” Fitzgerald said.
“We’re all aware that the golfing community wants to play in the best locations, on the best courses in the world. That’s what Tasmania has got and will have more of in the future. I think our geographical position, coupled with the golf offering that we are producing, will only make us stronger over the next decade.”
Those thoughts were echoed by Ramsay, who, together with course architects Neil Crafter and Paul Mogford, is currently working to develop the highly anticipated 18-hole golf course at Arm End (see breakout for details) outside of Hobart.
“I think ultimately, we’ve just got the right landforms and the right temperate climate to deliver a very, very premium experience at a very reasonable cost base,” said Ramsay, who grew up in Tasmania on Australia’s oldest operating golf course, Ratho Farm.
“It took a long time for me to explain that to people, but a great benefit of links golf is that if you use the right designers, it can be relatively low-cost to put designs on those natural landforms.
“The discerning golfer is always in pursuit of that raw, natural experience. Whereas, maybe for a couple of decades, there was a bit of a movement towards these very artificial, man-made constructions, which ultimately were extremely expensive to build and maintain.”
In essence, Tasmania’s topography, savvy course design and bold ideas from determined minds, have allowed it to become one of the world’s leading golf destinations in less than two decades. Thankfully, it sounds as though it’s only going to get better, too.
“Tassie could honestly have six or more Barnbougles with the access it has to world-class land. It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster getting to where we’re at now, but the state is pretty well poised,” Ramsay said.
So well poised, in fact, that Barnbougle itself recently added another layout to its already impressive stable in the form of the 14-hole Bougle Run.
The Bill Coore-designed short course – consisting of 12 par-3s and two par-4s – opened in March this year and lies adjacent to Lost Farm. It took just 124 days to build and was constructed during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The design work was done by John Hawker here and Bill Coore in the States, so it was all done by video footage, phone calls, pictures and drone footage. It even shocked me how we managed to get it done in 124 days of actual on-site construction,” Sattler said.
“It obviously hasn’t been open for very long and we’ve tried to keep the numbers down while it’s still growing in, but the response to Bougle Run has been amazing.”
Following the completion of another ‘must-play’ course in the north of the Apple Island, all eyes have now turned to the developments in the south of the state.
“The opportunities around Hobart in particular are very exciting,” Ramsay said.
“Mat Goggin’s property Seven Mile Beach (see below story for details) is very different to Arm End. But by God, it’s an awesome property and I think they’re going to get a great outcome there as well.”
Added Fitzgerald: “We’ve got four of the best public courses in Australia and I sit here – perhaps somewhat biasedly because I myself am a golfer – incredibly optimistic about the future of golf tourism in Tasmania.”
No argument here.
INSIDE SEVEN MILE BEACH
By co-designer, Mike Clayton
I was playing a mid-1990s tournament in Sydney with Mat Goggin when he told me about a piece of land at Hobart’s Seven Mile Beach.
“You can’t believe how perfect it is for golf. One day I’m going to build a course on it.”
By 2010 he’d formulated a plan involving pesky things including dealing with leasing the land, the inevitable local, non-golfer opposition to anything to do with golf and the necessary investment. Someone once asked Ben Crenshaw his view of the most important element of golf course design. Crenshaw bypassed all the predictable answers, instead plumping for the one thing without which nothing happens.
“The money.”
It wasn’t a reference to his design fee but rather a client with the necessary backing to get a course built.
It takes time – in this case more than a quarter of a century.
The site is as good as Mat promised. It’s undulating, sandy, runs all the way down to the edge of the water but the dunes are not so big the holes are compromised, or the golf becomes a hill climbing exercise.
People often ask how the site compares to Barnbougle. It’s much different. Barnbougle had almost no trees whilst Seven Mile is covered in Radiata pine, most of which will be removed to make way for the golf. Barnbougle was a long, narrow strip of land linking the beach to the farmland and there were only a couple of ways to route the golf course.
In Hobart the site is enormous, something both a blessing and a curse. Every direction you look there is a great hole but with so many options, you can never be sure if the routing is the absolute best one.
At Sand Hills in Nebraska, Crenshaw and Bill Coore spent a year on that phenomenal site finding the first tee, so perfect was the land and so many options did it throw up. Seven Mile Beach is very similar but, unlike Sand Hills, we will get the clubhouse less than a mile from the 1st tee!
My design partner, Mike DeVries of Cape Wickham fame was in Australia just before the world went COVID crazy in March of 2020 and we came up with a routing we think is very good.
As the trees are peeled away and the promise of the holes is revealed they will no doubt be tweaked but it’s a site promising to add much to Tasmanian golf.
Twenty-five years ago, the state was hardly a showcase of first-class golf course architecture but Barnbougle, Lost Farm, Cape Wickham and Ocean Dunes have completely changed the perception of the island’s golf. It’s now world-class and more importantly all of it is public golf and at prices far below those of equivalent level courses in the United States, New Zealand and Britain.
With Seven Mile Beach, Hobart gets to join Tasmania’s golf party and whilst Mat has given us no brief, the words of Richard Sattler and his perfect instructions for Barnbougle Dunes ring in our ears.
“I don’t care what you do – just don’t screw it up.”
AMAZING ARM END
One of the most exciting new projects in Australian golf is currently under way just outside of Hobart, near the coastal town of Opossum Bay, at South Arm Peninsula.
The development is the brainchild of Greg Ramsay, who played an integral role in establishing Barnbougle Dunes and currently manages Australia’s oldest running golf course, Ratho Farm.
“When I first came back from Scotland in my early 20s (in 2001) I scouted out and identified five amazing golf sites,” Ramsay told Golf Australia magazine.
“I’ve been very lucky to have lived and worked all around the world in the golf industry – but Arm End is quite literally one of the greatest sites ever given over to the game.
“What’s really cool about that site is that it’s for everyone. It’s big enough for three golf courses if we wanted to, but we’re putting in tens of kilometres of walking trails, cycling paths, fishing pontoons and picnic pavilions.”
The layout is being designed by renowned course architects Neil Crafter and Paul Mogford of Golf Strategies and is aiming to become a world-class, public links-style course. It will play roughly 6,000 metres from the tips, utilise the natural lay of the land and feature wide fairways.
“The site is a spectacular one, unlike any other to our knowledge in Australia, with water views from every hole around a dynamic coastline of dunes, cliffs, beaches and promontories,” Crafter + Mogford state on their website.
“The site for golf purposes is certainly top-10 calibre in Australia and our task is to design and build a course that is worthy of the site.”
The land at Arm End has been leased by Parks & Wildlife – following many years of hard work gathering permits from several government and regulatory bodies – however construction at the horseshoe-shaped peninsula has faced numerous delays. Should all go to plan, though, Tasmania will soon be able to bookend its northern stars with something truly remarkable in the south.
“Arm End is going to be spectacular. Some of those holes are going to have water views at 270 degrees,” Tourism Tasmania CEO John Fitzgerald said.
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