Every now and then a newspaper will trot out an article quoting academics and professionals advocating for the four-day working week.
Invariably they’ll offer up fine business cases about how it’s better for the worker and for productivity. Better also, they’ll say, for staff retention, staff attraction, reduced costs, the environment, carbon footprint, mental health, physical health, happiness.
Happiness! What are we even here for if not for happiness? And thus, I put it to you people, that we, the people, should be storming the citadels of politics and business and demanding the four-day working week. Because that, clearly, is plenty. Want to win the next election, Albo? Dutto? Make it happen. Make us all happy.
Not coincidentally, our advocacy for the four-day work week is predicated on three days free for golf and a nice mini-tour. Not a big tour. Not like going to Thailand or playing every course on the Bellarine (though these things would be quite good).
No, a mini-tour means three days’ heading out on a little loop from your metropolitan centre. It means cruising out through the regions: drive, play, stay, repeat. See the country, support the bush, play great golf. Win-win-win.
Golf Australia magazine took off on a 300km round-trip, south out of Sydney town, through the Southern Highlands, east across to the coast and back up to The Smoke. Three full days, two nights away, three rounds of cracking fun golf. Perfect.
And so, down the M31 we careened to the Southern Highlands, an easy 90-minute drive with a steady ascent (though you can’t tell) before arriving at land 700 metres above sea level with shades of Little England about it.
There are deciduous trees with multi-coloured leaves. There are hedges and weeping willow and poplars planted in rows as wind-breaks for paddocks. There are four distinct seasons. There can be eerie fog and crisp, white frost. Or it can be, as it was when we visited in April, pure and mild, Autumnal, even warm. Golf in these parts is sweet and seasonal, befitting high country of this sunburnt country of drought and flooding rains.
Top poem; not hyperbole. On the Thursday before we played, Moss Vale Golf Club was lashed with 140mm of rain. By the Tuesday, we were out in carts across the property. It’s only slightly up-and-down, but Moss Vale drains like an aqueduct.
The course was designed by Carnegie Clark in 1904 and boasts Kentucky bluegrass and fescue fairways lined by many large trees. It has short, dog-leg par-4s and stronger ones which run up or down or across the escarpment. It has tabletop and saucer-like bentgrass greens. It’s well worth a hit on a Highland fling.
Next day we’re next door at my favourite course in the region, Mt Broughton Golf and Country Club. You drive in through a gate and past a Peppers that’s semi-attached to the golf course and offers play-and-stay packages. There are mighty oaks and fallen leaves and a drive-way over which your tyres will crackle.
And then you get it into.
The first is a short, dog-leg par-4 up the hill and plays harder than index-18, given there’s a grove of mighty oaks in the way if you slice. Two is a long and strong par-3 called “Long Drop” which could take some hitting from the tips in a southerly. The third is an easy, wide and deceptively tricky-at-denouement par-5.
And from there it gets really quite cool, with ultra-wide fairways offering various routes to interesting end games.
Mount Broughton has been described as an “inland links” but it cannot be because there’s no such thing. A links sits on the non-arable, dunes-land which “links” the arable soil suitable to growing things, with the beach sand near the sea. Mount Broughton would be better described as “inland links-style”, with wide fairways and relative paucity of trees. It can play fairly soft, though, especially if it has received 140mm of rain.
Now, before we go any further, let’s remind ourselves there are knocks on every golf course in the world. There are members of Augusta National and Royal Melbourne and the 270-year-old Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews in the Kingdom of Fife who have their beefs with their course. This is golf. We are golfers. We beef.
So, keep that in mind when I write that if there’s a knock on Mount Broughton – and there are, a couple, it being a golf course played by golfers – it’s that when your ball enters what might be called the second cut of rough, it can disappear as if by magic. You can see it roll in. You can stamp around on the very ground, but you may never see it again.
This – let’s call it – “rough-rough” is knee-high wheat which is long and thick and woolly and free; and draws in golf balls and doesn’t give them back. It’s like investing in crypto, whatever that is.
Now, again, please don’t bypass Mount Broughton because you might lose a ball or two, for that would be a mistake. A big mistake. It’s a cracker of a golf course, a lot of fun, and you could go to your grave with the burden that you didn’t play Mount Broughton because some gibberer in a golf magazine said the long grass is like losing money in digital crypto-currency.
Fact is, however, the rye and fescue fairways are very wide and there is an almost a half-as-wide-again section of first-cut rough. And, outside that, the Great Succubus.
That said, all the long grass plays as lateral hazard. So don’t spend too long looking for your Hot Dot because you won’t be able to hit it anyway. So take a drop, a penalty and move on. Because Mount Broughton is fun city.
Four of the course’s par-5s are long and low-index. The 7th hole is index-6 and called the “Railway Hole” because it runs northwards along the train line. Fun tip: if a train is going by and your pal is teeing off and you pump your arm over your head, the train driver may let loose the mighty fog-horn and put your mate off and it would be funny. That said, it’s already difficult enough at 538m (from the tips) and lined on both sides by said Succubus.
The index-10 ninth hole doglegs late around weeping willow, the index-6 11th also runs along the train tracks, but is longer again at 550m (tips), while the 575m 15th hole is index-2 and runs back to the base. The string of holes from 11-15 is like an elongated Amen Corner, stretching out to the northern edge of the property before heading south-west.
The 12th is a cool par-4 over a ridge and down to a flat green. The 13th heads upwards to a table-top green bordered by the mother-of-all eucalypts. The 14th runs south-west along the northern border of the property to a green guarded by a small, mongrel pond.
And then, because your scorecard might not have enough fence posts, 15 is said index-2 par-5, which has OB all the way right and plays 524m from the white tees, where I’d suggest you play from if you want to be happy. See above re meaning of life, etc.
After that, as if to say sorry, the 17th is a gentle par-4, while 18 runs back to the clubhouse, which I want to say is “Tudor-style” but it’s not really; it’s more like a mini-castle in Bavaria where a count lives, or maybe a duke. There are pointy turrets with little windows. And there’s a balcony which looks down 18 and, as a place for a drink apres golf, accept no substitute.
An hour-long trip winding down the Macquarie Pass is The Links at Shell Cove, which would look at Mt Broughton’s 19th hole balcony and say, hold my beer garden. Because that’s what looks over their 18th green and first tee, and a few other bits besides.
The Links was opened in 2004 and has been by Shellharbour Council since 2008. It’s a rolling and fun property which I’d always seen in photos and thought, that looks pretty cool. And it was. It was better.
I played with three locals who nearly killed me with errant and hard-scuttling shanks and other bits of kit. The trio were four-day members, and recent handicap owners. It was like that bit at the start of Saving Private Ryan; the incoming shells, whizzing around. I was sitting in a cart, one went through the cabin and nearly took the top of my finger off.
But it’s a grouse track, the Links and I’d strongly urge a visit if you’re doing Sydney-Melbourne on a tour. I liked a lot of the holes. In part because I played well, which can cast a favourable tinge on a review, and no argument. The 7th is case in point. An uphill par-4, two fairways separated by a creek, green perpendicular to the approach. I hit a 3-wood then an 8-iron which nearly went in.
The par-4s at 10, 12, 13 and 16 are all strong, fun holes, traversing up and down and asking golfers to pick a line and commit. If you miss, there are well-placed lakes and hazards, but plenty of bail-out, too, as befitting an “inland links-style” layout.
The 17th is index-3 and a par-5. It is long, bulbous, slightly dog-legging right before heading steeply up to a small green. It is 494m from the back burners and you’ll need three pretty good shots to hit it in regulation.
The finisher is another par-5, short at 410m but up and then down, dog-legging left, and lined by trouble. And it was here that I hit, nearly, perhaps – stuff it, it was! – the greatest 3-wood of my life.
After a skinny driver scuttled up the hill and found the middle of the fairway, my ball lay 210m from a back middle flag. The southerly was helpful but the ball was above my feet and favoured a long draw, even pull. I aimed 40m right of the target, well out past the edge of the front-right trap. Anything could happen. And then I hit it. And magic happened.
I struck that bad-boy as sweetly as any golf shot ever. Damn, it felt good. It was that feeling of absolute purity when you cannot, and may not ever again, stripe that puppy better. There was no jarring in the hands. There was a sound like a whip cracking. It was so good I almost didn’t care where it went.
I did say almost. Because where it went was straight at the flag. And I sat back, slack-jawed and watched it soar on the salt breeze and draw and hit the middle of the green, and skid up towards the flag, rolling pin-high, maybe 12 feet.
I missed the eagle putt, of course; the game needs to show who’s in charge. But it was a pretty tricky one, a big-breaking right-to-left slider which traversed across the back-to-front angled green. I breathed on it, stroked it, watched it fall down just on the lowside. Tapped in for four-a-four. You’ll take that.
May have enjoyed a couple in the beer garden afterwards, too. Work could wait.
TRAVEL NOTES
LOCATION: Southern Highlands, NSW and Shellharbour, NSW.
HOW TO GET THERE: The Southern Highlands is a 90-minute drive south from Sydney Airport on the M31. Shellharbour is a 90-minute drive south on the M1. The distance between them is 60km, but an hour-long trip on the windy Macquarie Pass.
GREEN FEES: Moss Vale GC – $50 (18 holes, midweek), $60 (weekends). Mt Broughton G&CC – $45 (18 holes, midweek), $60 (weekends). The Links Shell Cove – $34 (18 holes, midweek), $44 (weekends).
WHERE TO EAT/DRINK: Our party enjoyed duck pate, pork belly bites and pints of Guinness at The Briars Inn, which has leather-bound stools and old things in glass cabinets. We dined at the Burrawang Hotel, which has a log fire and locals who appear to be equal part stockmen and beret-wearing eccentrics working on their memoirs.
WEBSITES: mtbroughton.com.au; mossvalegolfclub.com.au; linksshellcove.com.au
– IMAGES BY: Brendan James & Steven Foster
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