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Barnbougle Dunes is one of the unlikeliest success stories in Australian golf, and its reputation and profile are about to grow now that its third course – a quirky 14-holer known as Bougle Run – has opened to the public.
Situated among the dairy farms and sand dunes outside Bridport in north-east Tasmania – about 60 miles from Launceston, the nearest city of any note – Barnbougle might not be at the end of the world, but you can certainly see it from there.
The nearest Antarctic ice floe is not far to the south. New Zealand lies some way to the east. Beyond that there’s some 4,500 miles to the next speck of land at Easter Island. This is golf about as remote as you can get, where the wind whistles in from Bass Strait, fishing trawlers bob in Bridport harbour, and streets in the township, for reasons not fully explained, carry the names of boys in the northern half and girls in the southern half.
When local personality Richard Sattler decided in the early 2000s to transform this tract of farming land into a golf course, the guffaws from the mainland could be heard all the way across Bass Strait.
Industry veterans couldn’t understand how the business could hope to turn a profit. So, golfers would take a 60-minute flight from Melbourne, or a three-hour flight from Sydney, then drive 90 minutes from Launceston to this rustic outpost where accommodation was scarce and fine dining non-existent? How on earth could that possibly work?
And yet it has worked – and how.
The original Dunes course, created by Tom Doak and Mike Clayton in 2005, is ranked at No 35 on one list of the world’s top-100 courses. Lost Farm – the 20-hole Bill Coore-Ben Crenshaw course laid out next door in 2010 – is 89th on that same list.
Comfortable cabins and smart restaurants have been built at both courses and Barnbougle is now a destination for any serious Australian golfer. Perhaps more importantly, it has opened up a new tourism revenue stream for this hitherto neglected part of the island.
“It’s a unique proposition,” said Sattler’s daughter, Biz, who is Barnbougle’s marketing director. “This is a destination that provides for a different kind of golf experience – it feels like a real escape.”
Richard tells GGP: “We took the Bandon Dunes model from the States and we Australianised it. And (Bandon Dunes creator) Mike Keiser was instrumental in that. We wanted to create a wilderness golf experience where there was a working farm outside the course, not a real-estate development, and where golfers had everything they needed on site.”
It is the farm, rather than the golf course, where you’ll find Richard Sattler most days, tending to his 4,500 head of cattle and paddocks full of potatoes, up to 6,000 tonnes of them.
On 31 March, he and the Barnbougle family welcomed into the world a third arrival – Bougle Run, an extraordinary creation that sits on a ridge alongside Lost Farm.
“I was sick of conforming to all the regulations and traditions of golf – and everyone telling me what I had to do. So I thought, ‘Stuff it, I’ll build a 14-hole course.’ ”
Richard Sattler
Sattler asked Coore to create a design for that smallish area and the American (along with Crenshaw and John Hawker) delivered a 14-hole layout that comprises a dozen par-3s and two par-4s. On one or two holes, all that is required is a putt off the tee. The rest are regular shorter holes that demand skill and imagination.
Why 14 holes?
“I was sick of conforming to all the regulations and traditions of golf – and everyone telling me what I had to do,” the no-nonsense farmer admits. “So I thought, ‘Stuff it, I’ll build a 14-hole course.’ Now we’ve got 52 holes here – an 18-hole course, 20 holes and now 14 holes.”
The emphasis at Bougle Run is on fun and fast golf.
“We felt it would be quite a challenge to design an 18-hole course that lived up to the standards of the other two, so we decided to create something a bit different that wouldn’t be judged in quite the same light,” Biz Sattler said.
But her father wants everyone to know it’s no gimmicky pitch-and-putt – it’s a serious layout. “We gave the staff a go the other day and they couldn’t believe how tricky it was, so it’s no pushover,” he said. “I said to Bill (Coore), ‘It’s got to have genuine green complexes.’ ”
In creating Bougle Run, Sattler wanted to give non-golfers accompanying their spouses the chance at playing some golf without embarrassing themselves: “They can take a putter off some tees and just enjoy themselves. They should get around in a couple of hours.”
Canadian course designer Riley Johns was brought in to help with construction. He told GolfCourseArchitecture.net this month the routing begins and ends at the same tee box as the first hole at Lost Farm, but plays in the opposite direction.
“The 14-hole routing essentially plays up to the top of a giant dune ridge where it meanders in and out of peaks and valleys,” Johns said. “There are short holes that require only a well-struck putt, and then there are others that require a full driver. The dune ridge affords spectacular views of the entire property and the ocean coastline beyond.
“A few holes that stand out are the driveable par-4 fourth and fifth holes, the puttable sixth, and the ninth, which has one of the most distinct backdrops found anywhere on the property.”
There was another key reason why this unique 14-hole course was ideal for the Barnbougle site. Commercial flights from the mainland often arrive in Launceston around lunchtime and most visitors don’t check into their cabins until mid-afternoon. So, what to do for those couple of hours before dinner? Now the answer is simple – take off your coat, kick off your loafers, head straight for the first tee at Bougle Run for a quick 14 holes and a lot of fun at the end of the world.
E-Mail Charles