Golf travel
Golf in Australia
Golf in Australia is a links-and-sandbelt road trip: wild coastal courses in Tasmania, the firm, strategic sandbelt of Melbourne, and a long, mild season that runs opposite to the northern winter.
Best Nov–Apr (Tasmania mildest Dec–Mar); winter is the quiet, cheaper insider play
Australia is one of golf's great unsung trips — and for Northern Hemisphere players it has a killer hook: its summer is your winter. While the US and UK are frosted over, Australia is in shorts-and-firm-fairways season, which makes it the natural December-to-March escape for golfers who can't bear to put the clubs away.
Two regions carry the trip. Tasmania has become a genuine bucket-list pilgrimage on the back of Barnbougle — raw, walking, coastal links that sit comfortably in world top-100 conversations. The Melbourne Sandbelt (Royal Melbourne, Kingston Heath and friends) is the other half: firm, fast, bunkering-as-art strategic golf on sandy soil, an easy tram ride from a great food-and-coffee city. Pair the two and you have a fortnight that rivals anything in Scotland or Bandon.
Our Australian guides cover both halves of that trip: the coastal-links pilgrimage at Barnbougle in Tasmania, the wider Melbourne Sandbelt, and a deep dive on its crown jewel, Royal Melbourne.
Destinations
Tasmania
Barnbougle: the complete guide to Tasmania's links pilgrimage
Three world-class courses on a wild stretch of Tasmanian coast. Here's how to play the Dunes, Lost Farm and Bougle Run — when to go, how to get there, where to stay, and the gear the wind demands.
Read the guide
Victoria
The Melbourne Sandbelt: a guide to Australia's strategic golf heartland
The world's densest cluster of great courses — Royal Melbourne, Kingston Heath and more — on firm, sandy, bunker-carved land. What to play, how visitors actually get on, and when to go.
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Melbourne
Royal Melbourne golf guide: MacKenzie's Sandbelt masterpiece
Alister MacKenzie's West Course and the tournament Composite — the greatest course in the Southern Hemisphere. The courses, how overseas visitors play it, when to go, and getting there.
Read the guide