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Australia is home to IAN SMITH-WHITE some of the world’s most remarkable golf courses. How many of CHRISTMAS ISLAND GOLF CLUB these have you birdied?
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olf shouldn’t be cool, but it is. A favourite pastime of everyone from Cameron Diaz and Donald Trump to Kelly Slater, Alice Cooper and, erm, your least interesting co-worker, its resilience is remarkable. It doesn't matter that it’s the subject of a million groanworthy dadjoke coffee mugs (“Work is really starting to interfere with my golf!”), or that nobody looks good in plusfours. Golf is to sport what coffee is to beverages: too dominant to dip, and too much fun to fall. Whether your swing’s more of a Peter Garrett dance than an Adam Scott drive, if golf is your go, add a couple of these amazing Australian courses to your bucket list.
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MAX*D GO YOUR OWN WAY
Where: Christmas Island Best for: Crustaceans
Surprisingly large, at 135 square kilometres, and almost five times closer to Indonesia than Australia, Christmas Island is as breathtakingly beautiful as it is odd. It's home to around 1700 locals, an infamous immigration detention centre and a capital called Flying Fish Cove. Oh, and around 190 million red crabs. It’s the latter population that makes its jungle-lined, nine-hole, par-64 course unique. The crabs’ annual migration usually occurs around late October, carpeting the course’s greens and fairways with a moving carpet of enormous crustaceans. “If a crab moves your ball you must place it back to where it landed,” Club President Alan Thornton explains, “and if your ball falls into a crab hole, you have a free drop. “It may also be necessary to move crabs when putting.” Cute! But also, not. In 2020, another of the island's potentially delicious species, a truly colossal coconut crab, climbed a local's golf bag, then used its pincer to snap one of his clubs in half. It was “like a chainsaw”, said local golfer Paul Buhner.
