In Search Of The 19th Hole Along The World’s Longest Golf Course
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I’m no stranger to a sprawling salt-flat, secluded beach or the odd desert flood plain having spent my early childhood in Western Australia but given I’ve been moving about at a pretty constant clip since I left high school due to constant touring - an offer to drive and play the iconic Nullarbor with mates and Coopers Beers seemed like a pretty enticing cross off the lifetime list.
Before music, I played golf competitively, which meant since the age of fifteen, I travelled every so often for National and interstate tournaments. With music, necessity has required me to fly over a million miles in that time, but a gleaming majority of my time spent on the road has been… ‘on the road.’ Driving, whether for work or in my downtime, has always had a strange, meditative effect on me. Whether you’re out there solo or travelling with someone, there’s always time for a bit of reflection. I’ve always thought the seeming monotony of a long drive allows your conscious mind to almost sit in its own sort of cruise control whilst the subconscious mind wanders. Driving also evokes the notion of ‘taking the long way.’ Learning to appreciate journeys and processes and stopping to smell the roses, not that there were many roses this time.
When I was asked if I’d like to drive across the Nullarbor Plain between Ceduna and Perth to play golf, I thought I owed it to my teenage self, who always wished he had the time to do it to accept. Plus, the promise of new mates and endless beer made it an easy yes.
Give or take twenty-seven hours in the air, but ultimately rewarding. When you wave goodbye to your golf bag at the behemoth that is London’s Heathrow Airport to pick them up over a day later, off the twenty-foot conveyor belt in the little town of Port Lincoln, South Australia, it’s a moment for pause. I started thinking about the simplicity of what we were about to do. No shuttles, revolving airlock doors, PA systems telling you when and when it is supposed to happen, just 2300 kilometres of road.
Andrew Peters and I met up at LAX on my way through and we both looked forward to the idea of taking a little break from the noise of New York and Los Angeles. We’d met on the golf course before, but other than that, we didn’t really know one another, which is always a bit of a crap shoot. Take it from me: getting out on the road with anyone is a bit of a make-or-break. They could be your closest bandmate, best friend, spouse or family member, but you have to figure out pretty quickly how to spend at least eight hours a day picking music, sharing snacks, timing bathroom breaks and pacing conversation; otherwise, things can get real awkward. Luckily, Andrew and I have a mutual love of Tim Tams and Paul Simon, which I think is a pretty good place to start.
A friend of mine had told me about the famed ‘longest golf course in the world,’ which stretches the whole length of the Nullarbor Plain, requiring you to stop every 100 kilometres or so to play a hole. So off we took. Ceduna was the first stop where you retrieve your scorecards, and it’s also home to the first two holes of the Nullarbor Links, which required me to reacclimatise myself with the art of raking sand greens. I hadn’t done it since I played at the WA Sand Greens Championship in Beverly as a teenager, but it’s really fun and messy. You have to rake a clear path between you and the hole, ensuring you’ve raked the right pace and break.
After a couple of hours on the highway, we headed towards Fowlers Bay. It’s a different feel when you’re out in the middle of Australia, unlike Europe or the United States, you really feel the distance. Nothing is as built up around you, and the vastness makes you feel so small. The further along you travel, the more you begin to notice how the trees and the earthy shoulders on the side of the road change. The white coastal sands start to emerge, an insight into where we were heading. .
As the sun set, we pulled down a long driveway beside a runway for the Royal Flying Doctors Service and over the cattle gates to the Coorabie Farm. When we were done driving for the day, Peters and I smashed a few balls around and had a couple of Coopers tins before it got dark. We chatted with Poggie and Deb, caretakers of the Nullarbor Links, eating homemade stew in front of an open fire. It’s one of those moments that is always paired better with a beer. You know the ones. I’ve been saying this for a long time but having spent so much time on the road, I’ve been lucky enough to have witnessed beautiful vistas, heard incredible sounds and walked hallowed paths but I more often than not find myself travelling to places for the people I might meet and it has never rung truer than my evening spent in Coorabie. I felt truly grateful
Poggie and Deb’s families have been in Fowlers for generations, so, under their advice, we headed out to the coast and ventured off-road. From the tops of the dunes, you can make out the blowholes of migrating whales. I still find it amazing that in Australia, you can be in a dense wood of eucalyptus and then three minutes later, there’s a pure white sand beach with crystal water in front of you with no one around for kilometres.
Down from the dunes and through the middle of some incredible pink-coloured lakes, we were back on the highway and were driving for about an hour until we saw a sign that read ‘Wombat Hole’ and someone walking back to their car with a golf club and figured we were in the right place.
Driving up a red dirt road, we saw a little astro turf tee box and pointed in the direction of a thin stretch of cleared desert shrubs and what turned out to be a fairway and 600 meters away was a little waving flag, this was the first of the natural desert golf. It was a steep learning curve, but keeping the ball in play was necessary. If you miss the fairway, there’s little chance you’re finding that thing. I also didn’t expect the greens to be rock hard and lightning fast, so I had to develop a technique of kinda laying up where I could spin the ball, which is equally as frustrating and fulfilling when you got it right. I made a bogey but wasn’t too fussed as I blasted my third shot over the green.
We hopped back in the car, and as we kept going, we began to notice the trees thinning out and growing ever shorter. Before we knew it, we came over a rise, and they were gone. It’s eerie when you first see it, an uninterrupted horizon for miles and miles, but then when you take in the size of the sky, it gives you this strange excitement like you’re going where no one has gone.
Another hour or so down the road, I saw the far-off shimmer at the base of a lone cell tower, which was a relief. The repeating downloaded playlist on my phone was getting a little old (Nullarbor hack #1 download music before you leave). We had arrived at the famed Nullarbor Roadhouse. It’s quaint and seems a little stuck in time, but I loved it. A painted mural of Australian legends is in the front bar, and the giant whale sculpture is next to where you fill up gas. The old sign is iconic. After a long day, we downed a burger and got to sit out and watch one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen, and I cannot overstate the beauty of the night sky in the desert. It was another one of those moments when life is already pretty bloody good, but beer made it better.
The next day was going to be a big haul, so we got up early to play the next hole, which was behind the roadhouse. Dawn in the desert was as stunning as dusk, everything still except for the rumbling tyres of road trains every so often. The aptly named Dingo’s Den was another extremely long hole. I putted out to a barking kelpie and some dreary-eyed fellow Nullarbor commuters, and we headed south
As you approach the bite, you know what it will look like from all the tourism pictures, but what you don’t prepare yourself is how it makes you feel. The desert ends, you’re standing on the edge of a seventy-metre cliff, and there’s nothing between you and Antarctica. It’s surreal and quite literally feels like the bottom of the world. It was one of those places that made me realise how special a trip like this really was.
As you reach the end of the plain, more trees begin to materialise, as does the back nine of the Nullarbor Links. Before WA, you hit the 90-mile stretch, which is arguably the straightest road in the world. Imagine not moving your steering wheel an inch for two hours at 100km/ph.
Every hole along the way has a different schtick; there are giant windmills and kangaroos, and some timeless little motels stop next to most of them. The golf game was average, but the quality of the post-round company was as all-time. Everyone knows beer and golf go hand in hand, but I always found the 19th hole, the post-game watering hole, to be the most enjoyable part. It was so nice to sit in those roadhouses and hear where people were coming from and why, talking to truck drivers who were curious about why I was wearing golf shoes in the front bar.
As we passed Eucla, things felt a little more familiar. Western Australia has a distinct feel, with patches of bushfire-torn Jarrah forests and deep red dirt. As the frequency of the trucks began to increase, I could feel the trip coming to an end. Kalgoorlie was quickly approaching, as were the final two holes of the Nullarbor links and the end of our journey. It’s a fun way to finish, with pristine fairways and lightning greens cut out of the deep red clay.
I felt like it went by so quickly, but we were out there for a week, driving 2300 kilometres and playing eighteen holes of golf. Exhausted and thirsty, we were all golfed out and had more than a couple before heading back to Perth the next day. The scenery and the conversations were my highlights, but I guess that’s golf. Golf breaks up a kilometre walk enough that you might get to know yourself and the people you’re out there with a little better or, in this case, a beautiful part of our country. See you at the 19th hole for a Coopers.
“The Beers & Bogeys Nullarbor Tour” brought to you by Coopers. Watch episodes of this three-part series on all Coopers social channels from October 2nd.
