Unlike the ethos first evangelised by Richard Sattler at Barnbougle Dunes, and later realised by Darius Oliver at Cape Wickham on King Island and The Cliffs on Kangaroo Island, golf infrastructure on the Murray River is not a matter of “build it, and they will come”. It’s already built and they’re already coming.
It’s the same at Tocumwal Golf Club, a 15-minute drive north, which you would also describe as a very “Murray” golf course. Bunkers with a hard, defined edge, and full of orange, clay-based sand. Massive gum trees, though not cathedral-like. They’re there, and they’re unyielding, but they’re largely decorative unless you are bad.
Tocumwal is an easy walk across its two routes – the Captains and Presidents courses. The latter is tighter and more tree-lined, demanding accuracy. The Captains is longer and more open, though has more water hazards.
Like many courses, Tocumwal is known for fine playing conditions all year, affordable green fees, and appeal to travelling groups. The couch fairways are well-maintained and the bentgrass greens are fine and firm.
It’s fit for purpose.
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A bit over an hour west is the East Course of Rich River Golf Club, which opens with a long and strong par-5, followed by a demanding, low-index par-4 that often plays into the wind. It’s a solid, uncompromising start. You should warm up for it in the adjacent driving bay, is my tip.
Yet the story of Rich River isn’t just the holes; it’s the scale, ambition, and sense of momentum. There’s land everywhere and they own vast tracts of it. Internally, they’re building houses. There’s luxury accommodation called “Reflections” – 23 rooms, three storeys – Echuca-Moama’s never seen anything like it. Externally, they own 70 hectares, sitting out there, potentially new holes, potentially whatever they’d like to do with it. Roller disco? Build it, they’ll come.
Like many clubs along the Murray, Rich River is reinvesting, particularly in irrigation. It’s a theme across the region: the golf courses are their primary asset, and golf is being treated with respect by smart directors.
Says Director of Golf Steve Loader: “The irrigation upgrade alone – around $3.2 million – is already paying dividends. After a brutally hot summer, with temperatures pushing into the 40s, the course held up well. Now, with a bit of rain and cooler conditions, it’s thriving. The improvement is visible week to week.”
What draws people to Rich River is simple, according to Loader: “accessibility and value”.
“It’s one of the closest Murray River courses to Melbourne – around two and a half hours - making it an easy long-weekend destination,” he says. “Two courses, on-site accommodation, and a ‘park the car and forget it’ experience. Visitors arrive Friday afternoon and don’t need to drive again until Sunday. That’s a big part of the appeal.
“It’s a one-stop shop. Golf, accommodation, food, a few beers – it’s all within walking distance. No logistics, no stress.”
The East and West courses are playable and enjoyable. It isn’t a place you’ll lose a dozen balls and shoot 130. You can get around, make pars, enjoy yourself. I went out in 10-over, returned in two-over – net 75 in the stroke comp off the black tees. I was stoked with it.
Value is another key. While green fees for “resort” style courses elsewhere can push well past $100, Rich River remains far more affordable, often paired with appealing stay-and-play packages. “And visitors do come back,” adds Loader. “Groups arrive, play, eat, stay – and re-book before they leave. It’s a well-worn pattern.”
As mentioned, designer Bob Harrison has been brought in; a man known for creating engaging, visually appealing courses on otherwise ordinary sites. He carved Sanctuary Lakes out of the Altona salt flats. Yet the plan isn’t for Harrison to “blow the place up” according to Loader. “We want to steadily improve and evolve; and make better use of the land. We want to refine the layouts, and
lift the overall experience.”
On the agronomy side, the fairways are a hybrid couch – Wintergreen – similar in appearance to Santa Ana. For most golfers, the difference is negligible.
“The biggest transformation is happening on the greens,” Loader says. “The East Course greens are being rebuilt progressively – two at a time – stripping out the existing profile and replacing it with modern construction and new bentgrass surfaces.
“The West Course, however, is a different proposition entirely. It’s older, less well-constructed, and effectively a blank canvas. That’s where the real excitement lies.”
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“Exciting” would not be the word most used to describe the charming bush burgh of Barham that’s changed little since 1978, when my uncle Gerard was a 27-year-old Irish doctor fresh off the boat, whom locals convinced to drink beer in the river and then eat the local “delicacy” of yabbie heads.
And thus, I had no preconceived ideas about CluBarham. Which is a good way
to go into a place. Because Barham is actually delightful. Driving in, you’ll see a flat landscape and big river gums. Yet the golf course’s holes are beautifully framed, well-presented and quietly impressive. The trees are mighty sentinels, but the fairways aren’t tight, claustrophobic corridors. The holes feel shaped by the landscape.
Richard Chamberlain’s bunkering is another highlight. They’re raised around the greens. The mounding is quite lovely. The layout has movement – subtle rises and falls which keep things interesting. It’s not dramatic terrain, but it’s enough to give the course character, and a polish you might not expect for a country course in a town of 1500.
For the traveller, accommodation sits right on the course - golf-in, golf-out. You could park a cart outside your unit, roll straight onto the fairway. It’s easy, relaxed, unpretentious. For a golf trip, it’s a low-key, high-quality stop.
My tip: play early. Dew on the ground, light through the gums, a handful of groups drifting out quietly. Afterwards, head into town for lunch at the Barham Hotel, before a pub crawl of a hundred metres to the Royal Bridge Hotel near the river. Maybe a game of pool. Almost certainly a beer at genuine 1978 prices. Szechuan for dinner at Don’s Kitchen in cluBarham, job done.
***
Tooleybuc Golf Club is same-same, but different. Sunday mornings, they can have 25 juniors turning up to play. In a town of 200 people? Remarkable. After the kids, there’s a regular, 12:30 Sunday shotgun start, which attracts 40 or more players – orchard workers, farmers, locals, ring-ins from Australian golf magazines. The back bar is humming in the club after play.
The surrounding region is productive: citrus orchards, olives, nuts, cattle. Many members come straight from work, onto the course. There’s a relaxed, welcoming feel.
RV travellers can pull in for a powered site at low cost, run by the sporting club. Visitors are part of the mix immediately. It’s a great little community.
There’s fellows like Mick – a tattoo artist who tears around in a bright yellow, four-stroke golf cart he calls “Bob”, because that’s what the bloke he bought it off called it. Chief executive John Cameron was a jockey who rode in group one races against Jimmy Cassidy and Shane Dye. He was the boss of Mooney Valley’s race course, among others, and was near-death after a fight with stage four melanoma. He promised himself that if he survived, he’d work in golf because he loved it. He’s been living on house money ever since.
And then there is Eli, a 10-year-old with a cracking little golf swing, a fearless short game, and a 29-handicap that will one day render him upwards of 52 points at Tooleybuc GC. He’s that good. His lip is better.
Our four-ball on this Sunday comprises myself, Cameron, Eli and local painter Scott Munro, a tidy 8-marker who gives it a lash given his frequent training on the Sporting Club’s in-house simulator. On the 3rd/12th, our second-last hole, Cameron – a 20-marker who was having a very ordinary day - slices his drive far out into the tundra. He picks up his tee and remarks, “Jeez – I wish we were playing Ambrose.”
Without missing a beat, the kid, Eli – and there’s no way to do justice to the purity
of his timing – says: “It wouldn’t have done us any good.” And the three men fall apart. There’s no way it can read as funny. The timing of it, from the mouths of a babes, all that. It was magnificent.
After an evening in the pub which included a mighty and perfectly-cooked medium-rare 400g Scotch fillet with pepper sauce, we’re off through the dawn light, careful of leaping marsupials, and past the hamlets of Goodnight and Tol Tol, and into...
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Robinvale Golf Club which is a great little course with small greens with bunkers filled only with rough-length grass. The day we visit, it’s lush and green and pretty; the work of sprinklers complementing that of nature.
The licensed club is going gangbusters and, like many of his colleagues on the river, General Manager Fraser Bayne wants to put back in.
“We’ve created a new pro shop and we’re going to move some greens around. We’ve had Lukas Michel run his eye over it and devise a master plan. It was really interesting to hear his suggestions. He saw short par-4s that I had never thought of. There’s trees we’ll be bringing down and we’ll bring some bunkers back into play, too,” Bayne says.
“And the 18th green, we’re going to move it in front of the barbecue area and make it a finisher people can watch while enjoying a beer.”
Robinvale has several one- and two-bedroom units, and visitors are welcome to enter events including the Robinvale Open, the Blossom Classic, the Murray Merlin Bumbang Classic (with many fish-related prizes), and the Willis Family Turkey Trot just before Christmas.
Mighty Murray: Things to do
In March of 2018, the author of this piece took a 20-golfer tour to the Murray and enjoyed four fine rounds of golf – at Thurgoona, Albury, Black Bull and Yarrawonga-Mulwala. And they were good times indeed, complemented by a cracking day at the Albury Gold Cup race meeting, a fine evening watching water skiing at Mulwala Water Ski Club, and a long lunch for the ages at a vineyard in Rutherglen called Lake Moodemere Estate.
It’s an itinerary that could be repeated up and down the river. There are vineyards near Mildura, Albury, Echuca and Barham. You can pilot a boat between vineyards, moor off their docks. You can
fish from a houseboat and cook up a fresh-caught Murray River cod, washed down by Trentham Estate Riesling.
There are race days at Swan Hill and Kerang. The Towong Turf Club is known as the “Flemington of the Bush” and each March hosts the Towong Cup, first run in 1871. It’s $30 to get in, there’s a seven race card, fashions in the field and a free shuttle bus back to the pub.
Cobram Barooga has a night-time walk through the bush called “Bullanginya Dreaming”, a “lunar light journey” by the banks of Bullanginya Lagoon. It’s an immersive experience that details the Indigenous history of the region through a laser light show. It’s beautiful, eerie stuff.
You could spend a fine Saturday afternoon watching quality Australian rules football in the Ovens and Murray League. Brendon Fevola was recruited by bookmaker and Sportsbet founder Matt Tripp to play for Tripp’s home club, the Yarrawonga Pigeons. The Pigeons would win premierships in 2012 and 2013. Today, there are rumours former Richmond Tigers superstar Dustin Martin is set to pull on the Pigeons’ navy blue and white strip.
Stars? Enjoy a clifftop dinner with an astronomer-led stargazing session hosted by Dark Sky Tours.
Murray River golf courses
Thurgoona Country Club Resort
1 Evesham Pl, Thurgoona; (02) 6043 1902; golf@thurgoonaresort.com.au; thurgoonaresort.com.au
Albury Commercial Golf Club
530 North Street, Albury; (02) 6057 2801; proshop@commercialclubalbury.com.au; commercialclubalbury.com.au
Howlong Golf Resort
186 Golf Club Dr, Howlong; (02) 6026 5822; enquiries@howlonggolf.com.au; howlonggolf.com.au
Black Bull Golf Course
1 Silverwoods Blvd, Yarrawonga; (03) 5744 0044; golf@blackbull.com.au; blackbull.com.au
Yarrrawonga Mulwala Golf Club Resort
1 Gulai Rd, Mulwala; (03) 5744 1911; proshop@yarragolf.com.au;
yarragolf.com.au
Corowa Golf Club
1 Hume St, Corowa; (02) 6033 2162; proshop@corowagolfclub.com.au; corowagolfclub.com.au
Cobram Barooga Golf Club
10-16 Burkinshaw Street, Barooga; (03) 5873 4372; proshop@sporties.com.au;
cbgc.com.au
Club Tocumwal
Barooga Road, Tocumwal; (03) 5874 9111; reception@clubtocumwal.com; clubtocumwal.com
Rich River Golf Club
Twenty Four Lane, Moama; (03) 5481 3372; rrgc@richriver.com.au; richriver.com.au
Murray Downs Golf & Country Club
100 Murray Downs Dr, Murray Downs; (03) 5033 1422; reception@mdclubs.com.au; murraydownsgolf.com.au/golf
CluBarham
Moulamein Road, Barham; (03) 5451 1800; proshop@clubarham.com.au;
clubarham.com.au/golfing
Tooleybuc Sporting Club
Lockhart Rd, Tooleybuc; (03) 5030 5476; enquiries@tooleybucsc.com.au; tooleybucsc.com.au
Robinvale Golf Club
4240 Murray Valley Hwy, Robinvale; (03) 5026 3286; info@robinvalegolfclub.com.au; robinvalegolfclub.com.au
The River Card
The Golf On The Murray (GOTM) group comprises the well-established river courses at Corowa, Yarrawonga Mulwala, Tocumwal, Cobram Barooga, Rich River, Barham and Murray Downs. And, for an annual fee of $200, you can play each one for free. Once, anyway.
It’s called “The River Card”, and offers one complimentary round at each of these Magnificent Seven courses. Top of that, you can take 35 percent from the standard green fee for up to five additional rounds per GOTM club throughout the year.
“It’s designed to keep golfers playing more often, while unlocking the variety and quality that defines the Murray region,” GOTM Marketing Manager David Miles says. “It’s delivered instantly via email, you can add it to Apple or Google Wallet, and it’s immediately available across all seven clubs.”
For each club’s play-and-stay packages, check out: golfonthemurray.com.au
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