This trip includes games at 5 courses commonly agreed to be in the top 10 in Australia and in the mix for top 50 in the world.  It is generally agreed that Royal Melbourne West is the best course in Australia but several people I had met over the past couple of weeks had told me that, in their opinion, Kingston Heath was, in fact, better.  I was very fortunate to be playing at KH, since the World Cup of golf is being played there next week.  Indeed, as I arrived at the club I was met by the sight of fairly advanced preparations for a top level tournament.  Stands were built, hospitality tents constructed and all the other paraphenalia of a major sporting event was in place.

I had played with my host, Rich, at Hobart on Saturday.  He has won the KH club championship 10 times over 23 years, most recently earlier this year and plays off +3.  He had, over the weekend, amused us all with tales of competing in the Australian Amateur at Royal Hobart.  He was the perfect man to show me KH and how to play it.  I, meanwhile, had had less than 5 hours sleep and an awfully long day yesterday and, sadly, it showed in my game.

There is always a danger when playing a course that you have very high expectations of that you will be disappointed, even if it is very good.  I had those very high expectations of KH and was, consequently, slightly anxious that I would feel a little let down.  (In contrast, it occurred to me that before playing NSW I was so aware of the criticisms thrown its way that my expectations were lower than they would normally be for such a great course and consequently was blown away).

I need not have worried.  KH is simply a masterpiece.  Originally designed by Dan Soutar it was visited in 1926 by Alistair Mackenzie, who provided a bunkering scheme but left it pretty much alone aside from that.  It is (much like the Old Course at St Andrews and Muirfield in Scotland) on what is basically a flat sight with some relatively small scale undulation.  I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that land like this is the perfect land for a golf course.  On virtually every shot at KH, the golfer needs to think hard about where to play to to provide the easiest next shot.  Every green has a prefrred angle to approach it from, nearly always determined by where the hole has been put that day.  The fairways and greens are firm, the fairways kept short, giving wonderfully tight lies and the greens are fast.  On nearly every green being above the hole is a very bad place to be!  I drove the ball reasonably but my iron game wasn’t great, so I visited many bunkers.  The greyish sand in these was firm and a great consistency to play from.

Rich shot something like a level par 72, a couple of shots worse than handicap but demonstrated why he has competed so well around this course.  Many excellent golfers are more than a little self obsessed when on the course, that could not be less true of Rich, who I had been told in advance was one of life’s top blokes.  He was great company and was able to tell me things about the course that I would never had realised on one play on my own.  I will look forward intently to seeing top professionals play the course next week.  Having played some of the less than stellar courses the professional game visits Kingston Heath should be a serious test for them.

After the game Rich showed me around the (for Australia) relatively modest clubhouse, including the wide painting commissioned by the club of the clubhouse setting, with each of the male and female professional golfers who had won at KH, other notable individuals in the club’s history (such as Mackenzie) and a handful of the club’s great champions, including him.  After a beer and a sandwich, I bought a couple of mementos from the pro-shop and bid a sad fairwell to Kingston Heath, a club and course of which I had had very high expectations and which managed to exceed them.  If Royal Melbourne West (where I’m playing tomorrow) is as good, let alone better, than I am due another real treat then.

*Having promised that I wouldn’t forget my camera again, I committed just that error yesterday morning.  I blame Quantas.  The two images here are from the ‘net, where there are dozens of other great images of this great course.  What these don’t show, of course, are the preparations for the World Cup.

The flight to Melbourne was uneventful other than the fact that I had to pay a $180 surcharge for excess luggage, as I was on a Jetstar flight and they have a 20 kg capacity, as againt Quantas’ 30kg allowance.  I’m told I can get this refunded by Quantas.

At Melbourne Airport I collected my hire car and, at 11.55pm, set off for my AirBnB.  The already long day grew even longer, as the Freeway was closed, so I had to take a longer route.  When I arrived at five to one in the morning, Peter, one of my hosts met me and showed me around the place.

I hadn’t used AirBnB before this trip.  All had been OK but some more than others.  The Bridport one being the best of the 3 and North Hobart the least good.  This one, in Brighton East, looks lie it will blow all the others away.  It is in a large, modern house and is really quite luxurious.

I had to be at Kingston Heath Golf Club, one of the highlights of the trip, at 7.30 in the morning, so I went pretty much straight to bed, exhausted and concerned about how, after a long day like this and just 5 hours sleep, my game would be in the morning.

My flight from Hobart was scheduled for 10.10am and, as I drove to the airport just before 8, I regretted that yesterday’s foul weather had meant that I hadn’t really seen much of Hobart.  The weather, though still overcast, was a bit better and scheduled to improve.  Nonetheless, I returned my hire car and headed into the terminal to check in.

It was at this point that I learned that my flight had been cancelled and that the Quantas check in staff weren’t sure which alternative flight I had been bumped to.  I was given a voucher to get breakfast and told to come back in 30 minutes.  When I did, there was a substantial and slow queue of disgruntled passengers due on the same flight.  When I got to the front of that queue I was told that I had been put on the 9.55pm flight, due in to Melbourne at 11.15pm.  I had been due to play golf near Melbourne this afternoon with David, so I called him to let him know I wasn’t going to make it.  Fortunately we were able to rearrange fro Tuesday afternoon.  As I was on the ‘phone I bumped into Richard, who had been with the TGF crew at Royal Hobart and was departing to Brisbane.  He mentioned that Peter (who lives in Hobart) and Firey (who had been due on the same flight as me) were both around the airport.

I managed to find Peter and Firey and Peter offered to show us some of Hobart.  We drove down to the historic Salamanca Quay where we had a coffee and then strolled around.  Tasmania is well known for its thriving wine industry but less well known (to me, at least) for its distilling and brewing.  I had sampled some local beers last night but had not, as yet, tried the whisky.  Firey and I rectified that at the Lark distillery, while Peter, as designated driver, watched on.

I am pleased to report that The Lark’s Traditional Cask Single Malt is, indeed, a fine whisky.  Firey had been put on an earlier flight than me and Peter needed to get him back to the airport.  On the way, he dropped me off at the Museum of Old an New Art, outside Hobart.  MONA is one of Hobart’s biggest and most controversial attractions.

MONA is and exhibition of works owned by David Walsh, who grew up in Tasmania and made a fortune as a professional gambler, using software to make a profit.  He is a colourful figure and MONA reflects that.  Opened in 2011 it is, first of all, a tremendous building, built of rust coloured metal, constructed on four floors and built into the rock face, on a spit of land overlooking a bay.  It is surrounded by Walsh’s winery Moorilla  (and brewery Moo Brew).  As well as the gallery on three floors, there is a high class restaurant, a wine bar and a cellar door.

The current exhibit “On the Origin of Art” combines a few traditional works (some classical European, some from other cultures) alongside newer works.  As with most modern art, I found some of it challenging, some of it interesting and some of it made me wonder what the hell it was about!

A number of works compared historic representations of the female body (classical European nudes, early Japanese drawings, South Sea Island sculptures, with more pornographic images from the turn of the 20th century, the ’40s and ’50s and more recently.  Startling and shocking but actually very thought provoking.

I had a bite to eat in the wine bar, with a pleasant glass of riesling.

I returned to view more art, including some of the sculptures outside the building:

I then returned to the wine bar with my laptop, intending to post a blog entry.  Frustratingly, my laptop’s battery had died, hence the delay in posts.  Eventually, I picked up a series of voicemails which had failed to reach me previously as reception in the bar was poor.  Peter had rung to arrange to pick me up.  We agreed that I would catch the Mona Roma:

A ferry provided to take MONA customers to the Salamanca Quay.  At Salamanca Quay, I came across the “cellar door” of Domaine Simha, a Hobart winery with a very natural, traditional approach, whose wines I had been keen to try.  While I waited for Peter I tried a couple of their pinot noirs, which were excellent.

Peter had suggested that I have dinner with him and Amanda, his wife and he would then drive me to the airport.  Peter lives in a large house on a hill, a few miles out of Hobart.  The views are simply stunning, as shown by the image at the top of this blog.  We had a lovely meal and I had a couple of glasses of very good local pinot noir before Peter dropped me off at the airport just in time for my flight.  What could have been a miserable day had actually turned out to be a very pleasant one.

The weather remained miserable well into Sunday evening.  I had planned to walk into Hobart and explore and grab a bite to eat.  The weather was too grim to make that a good prospect.  Instead, I spent a bit of time at the AirBnB in North Hobart and then discovered that The Winston, where I had a cheeky half on my way the the meal on Saturday evening was also recommended for food.

I walked the short distance to the Winston, which was heaving with people on a Sunday night and ordered a pulled pork sandwich and some wings and worked my way through 3 halves of their own beers (they also had a decent list of foreign beers), each of which was very good.  Not haute cuisine (though the food was good) but satisfying.  More importantly, evidence that the rumours of a burgeoning Aussie craft beer movement were possibly true.