Mike,
Yes, I already played the course a few months back. And I had a good time there. I am sure it had as much to do with the weather, the company and the fact it was free, as the design of the course.
I found the course to be in good nick and the design a mixture of good, indifferent and really really bad.
The green sites on the front nine were very flat and unimaginative. Nothing really offensive but nothing good to say about them either.
The really offensive stuff for me was the hidden water hazard on 14, where a ball kicked into it from the middle of the fairway, the fairway bunkering on the 10th tee shot and the 2nd hole second shot where on both occasions the average player had a 20 metre wide strip of fairway to aim for between two 100 metre long bunkers but the good players could just hit over the bunkers.
Stuff that I thought was good: After the tee shot, I thought that the tenth hole was really good, especially with the pin on the right side of the green. For a 300m bunkerless Par 4, I thought the 11th was good. (Possibly swayed by the fact that I hit my tee shot to 20 feet.) The twelfth green was ok, good undulations and a bunker with some depth. The 13th hole was quite pretty, as it wa designed to be, and moderatly interesting. The 15th tee shot had some interesting options, about a 230 metre carry to cut the corner off the lake and leave an iron into the green. And as much as I dont like the cliched island green, the 18th was an interesting way to finish a match that was all square.
The aesthetics of the courser were absolutely terrible. The waste bunkers just looked terribly out of place. Although you say that it is not golf country, I think that a course like Axedale (another 80 km up the road on similar ground) does a far better job of blending in with the surroundings. If you look at some of the properties around hidden valley, there are beautiful gum trees that fit in well with the valleys and eroded creek beds etc. Why they decided that every hole need to be lined with fir trees is totally beyond me. They look bad now but in a few years they are going to look absolutely terrible. And I hate to think what the cost of planting these semi mature trees was.
As for the redesign, it certainly does look better, bringing into play some obvious features like the erosion gully that was 20 metres to the right of the 5th fairway, eliminating alot of the problems with the current design but creating some new ones as well. eg I cant see anyone not taking an iron off the tee on the 501m Par 5 15th.
But the main problem is that it adds another two styles to the course. You have 5 diffenrt styles of bunkers on the one course. Hideous. And like you, I cant understand the added length. What has happenned between 2001 and 2002 that makes you want to add 450 metres to a course?