King Island’s Cape Wickham Links this year became the second golf course in history to knock the Royal Melbourne Golf Club from its top spot in Australian Golf Digest’s list of Australia’s best 100 courses.
The development of two world-class golf courses has opened up a new avenue of tourism for the rugged island.
The additional fame of the island’s two courses has presented challenges for an island already stretched for accommodation, especially as two new courses are on the way.
If you want to visit Australia’s best golf course, you’ll need a plane. Or be willing to share a boat ride with hundreds of cows.
That is, unless you’re one of the roughly 1,500 people living on remote King Island, located about halfway between Victoria and Tasmania in the Bass Strait.
At less than 10 years old, Cape Wickham Links on the island’s northern tip this year became the second golf course in history to knock the Royal Melbourne Golf Club from its top spot in Australian Golf Digest’s list of the best 100 courses in the country.
The list is the 19th biennial ranking of the country’s top courses.
For nearly four decades the Royal Melbourne’s West Course has held the crown, aside from 2010 when the title went to suburban Melbourne course Kingston Heath.
This year, the remote public course has won the tussle to the top … just.
With the island’s Cape Wickham Links golf course and nearby Ocean Dunes course both ranking within the top 13, and two more courses in the pipeline, tourism operators are calling for more accommodation to meet increasing visitor needs.
Famed for its artisan cheese, premium beef, luxury seafood, and relaxed lifestyle, King island’s agriculture-dominated economy thrives on steady rainfall, temperate climate and rich soils.
For nearly 100 years, a volunteer-run, nine-hole golf course beloved by the local farmers was the only sign of the sport on the island.
That was until the early 2010s, when a patch of marginal farmland on the island’s northernmost tip was bought by a golf construction company, and eventually turned into the world-class Cape Wickham Links.
It was quickly followed by Ocean Dunes on the island’s west coast, built on yet another patch of former coastal grazing land about 4 kilometres from the main town of Currie.
Adam Hely is a keen golfer, the president of the local tourism association, and runs the island’s only car hire company alongside his wife.
“Just leave it out the front with the keys in the ignition, we’ll take care of it,” he regularly tells tourists as they drop their car back at the only airport.
In Mr Hely’s eyes, the slow conversion of some of the island’s scenic but lower-quality farmland into world-class golf courses has had tremendous pay-off.
“It’s one of the big reasons that tourism has grown on the island,” he said.
“It accounts for about 60 per cent of our tourists.
“It’s such a surprise, you fly into this little island which is 60 by 20 [kilometres] wide … you go down these funny little gravel roads, and then you open up onto these magnificent golf courses.”
Over the summer, golfers from interstate and around the world flock to tee off over the craggy dunes and crashing waves of all three golf courses.
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That’s reflected in the bulging tourism numbers, which have swelled from between 5,000 and 6,000 people in 2011–12 to 17,900 in 2022–23.
Cape Wickham’s manager, Thuan Quach, who goes by Daisy, moved to the island nearly 18 months ago from Vietnam, leaping at the chance to live in Australia and run the remote course.
She was thrilled when the course was named number one earlier in the year.
“It’s amazing news for us. I even couldn’t sleep the night before it was announced,” she said.
But the additional fame has presented challenges for an already stretched island.
“The whole island now, we have 130 beds, which is really hard for people to come here and do all the other activities, not just golf,” Ms Quach said.
“At least we have two golf courses, so one day we can accommodate 150 each, maybe. Ideally, one day we’ll have a big hotel so we can accommodate them.”
Up the road at Ocean Dunes, currently ranked number 13 in the Australian Golf Digest list, manager Cameron Jones has been thinking about similar issues, including staffing.
“The golf courses are new, inside 10 years, so infrastructure is still coming,” he explained.
“We’re doing development here at Ocean Dunes that will see 60 rooms … accommodation is key, on the back of also supporting a working staff here, accommodation for them will be important.”
And, with plans for at least two more golf courses in the works, accommodation and staff could be in higher demand in the future.
While the extra money and energy on the island chips into the local economy, Mr Hely was careful to point out it could only go so far.
“Our island has been and will be a primary production island … we’re so proud of the beef that we produce here, the cheese, the fishing industry, our kelp industry … but tourism is a tremendous add on … it works hand in hand,” he said.
“Rural industry is probably maxed out on the island, and we need to have some future industry for the kids and the grandkids to have a career here … but we’re not the Gold Coast, we don’t want hundreds of thousands of people here a week.
“We’ve got to be careful with what we do because this is a unique place to come to and it is a special place and we’ve got to get that balance right.”
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