[Steve_Roths]

For a long while now I have gotten the sense that Sand Hills was this website's Holy Grail.  But, I am starting to think that Barnbougle might be slipping past the Mullen Masterpiece.

The reason I say this is the immense amount of effort and time it will take the vast majority of us to make it to Tasmania.  

I was looking into a trip down there in September and this is what I am faced with:

5 hour flight to LA.

4 hours cooling my heals in LAX.

14 hour flight to Sydney.

Short hop to Taz.  

45 minute bus ride.

And, then of course you have to do the entire thing all over again once you are done with your visit.  

It makes Mullen seem like its in your backyard.

Maybe I am wrong, but Barn just might be the ultimate prize...

[James Bennett]

Steve Roths

it won't help much of the overall travel time but...

1. check whether you can have less lay-over if you fly San Francisco to Sydney (United do this, but you would have to fly United )

2. check the Los Angeles to Melbourne flight options, again it may reduce your layover time at LAX, and quite possibly at Melbourne.  Also it may be easier to get to Launceston (to get the Barny Bus) from Melbourne than it is from Sydney

3. consider some other trips in conjunction with Barnbougle.  This could be the Melbourne sandbelt (an hours drive from the airport), the Mornington Peninsula (2 hours drive from melbourne airport) and/or perhaps NSW GC (about 20 minutes from Sydney airport)  Or a more extreme version would be to go via NZ (air NZ fly from Auckland to San Fran, and also to LA I expect.  The service and economy seating is much, much better than most of the other Pacific crossing alternatives).  You could pick up the NZ highlights, if you have the time and money and several hours to do the necessary interior travel.

Of course, all of this looks easier to people who have more than two weeks leave to plan such a trip around (ie Autsralians going north).  If you are trying to fit such a trip into a short time period, you have my sympathies.

James B

[Dan Herrmann]

Steve,
You should do it, and record the whole thing.  It would be a great TV show/indie film.  The trek to your golf holy grail!

[mike_beene]

Not sure the timing on this ,but Quantas supposedly wants to do DFW to Sidney but needs a slightly longer range plane which they are getting.That said,16 hour flight is hard to stomach.

[RJ_Daley]

Dan Herrmann, excellent idea.  Heck, that ought to be a no brainer for the golf channel as a special program.  Get a 4some of regular Joe's (but fanatical and well studied on GCA and history of the game) and the theme that these guys will go to the ends of the earth to find great golf.  A cameraman and producer, an itinerary where they hit those other Sand Belt and Mornington Penn., courses on the way to find the holy grail, Barneygoogles.

I bet every last one of our members of the treehouse would watch it!    

[Michael Robin]

Steve, I'm afraid this travel is very necessary because Barnbougle must be seen. Let no one steer you away from this trek because this is a grail quest that will not disappoint. Maybe break up the trip with a day in LA. Know a good place to play there if you want a game.

[Tom_Doak]

Steve:

Don't be a wimp.  I have made the trip to Tasmania seven times in the course of building Barnbougle, plus a few similar-scale trips to Cape Kidnappers thrown in for good measure.  It's a long way to go, but it's not nearly as hard to do as everyone imagines.  

Actually, the hard part is coming back home after you've got your body clock almost reset and you've succeeded in your quest.

[TEPaul]

Is the term "Holy Grail" supposed to indicate the journey or the prize----or a little of both?

If you ask me those French dudes who have been mythologized as the "Knights Templar" who journeyed all the way from France and Western Europe to Jerusaleum and lived for a few time on top of the Holy Temple (and apparently made off with the Holy Grail) were not heroes or brave fighters and defenders of the Crusaders but just a bunch of common French thieves on horseback. They definitely got rich though.  

[TEPaul]

"Don't be a wimp.  I have made the trip to Tasmania seven times in the course of building Barnbougle, plus a few similar-scale trips to Cape Kidnappers thrown in for good measure.  It's a long way to go, but it's not nearly as hard to do as everyone imagines."

Tom Doak:

Before we can continue to carry on an intelligent conversation of whether or not Americans should journey to the antipode to see and play Barnbougle, something needs to be made extremely clear here first.

Is it a wimp or a whimp??  

[Andrew Thomson]

If you come al the way down, it would be silly not to at leas see the likes of Royal Melbourne, Kingston Heath, NSW and across the ditch to Cape Kid and P. Beach.

If you like a nice red, its agreat excuse to zoom across to Royal Adelaide before hitting the Barossa Valley  

[ChasLawler]

Steve:

Don't be a wimp.  I have made the trip to Tasmania seven times in the course of building Barnbougle, plus a few similar-scale trips to Cape Kidnappers thrown in for good measure.  It's a long way to go, but it's not nearly as hard to do as everyone imagines.  

I'd imagine it's a little easier to stomach when you're getting paid to make the trip.  

[Tim Pitner]

Steve,

I think the answer to your question is yes.  I currently have a list of golf trips I want to take, both foreign and domestic.  The trip to Barnbougle stands out as the most exotic and quixotic.  Of course, you'd have to tie in a trip to the Sand Belt, but it might be Barnbougle that most captures the imagination.

[Steve_Roths]

You guys must be insane to think I would go all the way down there and not play everything else.  

And Tom, trust me I am going to suck it up and do it.  No worries.

[Jason Topp]

I have actually taken the trip from Minneapolis - LA-Sydney-Launceston and then because we wanted to stay on the East coast of Tasmania - a 3 hour drive to Binalong Bay.  

We left at 4:50 pm, December 21st, arived in Sydney at 8 am on the 23rd, and after a day at the beach flew to Launceston in the evening, and arrived in a rainstorm unable to find the key to the house we rented.  We got in our house at around 10:30 pm.  

I have no idea how long the trip took, but I would definitely do it again.  Driving through rural Tasmania feels like you are alone in a truly exotic location.

Interestingly enough, I think Barnbougle should be more of a "must" destination for Australians than Americans or Europeans.  

For us, there are many links options far more accessible, with the sandbelt courses being the truly once in a lifetime type experience.  I viewed Barnbougle as on par with, but not all that much different than Scotland or Ireland.

For Australians, Barnbougle is the one opportunity of which I am aware to experience a links course that feels just like Ireland and Scotland without travelling 1/2 way around the world.  Even the weather is right.

[Wayne_Kozun]

Steve:

Don't be a wimp.  I have made the trip to Tasmania seven times in the course of building Barnbougle, plus a few similar-scale trips to Cape Kidnappers thrown in for good measure.  It's a long way to go, but it's not nearly as hard to do as everyone imagines.  

According to Bloomberg Magazine you made 50 visits to the site to tinker with the design!  Is that true?

[Voytek Wilczak]

For a long while now I have gotten the sense that Sand Hills was this website's Holy Grail.  But, I am starting to think that Barnbougle might be slipping past the Mullen Masterpiece.

The reason I say this is the immense amount of effort and time it will take the vast majority of us to make it to Tasmania.  

I was looking into a trip down there in September and this is what I am faced with:

5 hour flight to LA.

4 hours cooling my heals in LAX.

14 hour flight to Sydney.

Short hop to Taz.  

45 minute bus ride.

And, then of course you have to do the entire thing all over again once you are done with your visit.  

It makes Mullen seem like its in your backyard.

Maybe I am wrong, but Barn just might be the ultimate prize...

They don't call it pilgrimage for nothing...

It's not supposed to be easy.

[tonyt]

The hot tip is to arrive in Launceston from Melbourne, not Sydney.

If San francisco Golf Club and Olympic were quiet on weekdays and welcoming of unnaccompanied visitors for around $US100 each, and Harding Park or whatever comes third was a pristine yet near-deserted $25 muse, would any serious golf lover find it difficult to go there and then travel on to a $US50 world top 50 Pac Dunes type course an hour's flight from SF and a 45 min bus ride and have the course virtually to yourselves for as many days as you can spare?

Any Aussie among us not doing that some time over the next 3-4 years would be considered insane.

[Jeff Fortson]

I thought the Holy Grail was the seed of Mary Magdalene and Jesus.


Jeff F.

[Steve_Roths]

If San francisco Golf Club and Olympic were quiet on weekdays and welcoming of unnaccompanied visitors for around $US100 each, and Harding Park or whatever comes third was a pristine yet near-deserted $25 muse, would any serious golf lover find it difficult to go there and then travel on to a $US50 world top 50 Pac Dunes type course an hour's flight from SF and a 45 min bus ride and have the course virtually to yourselves for as many days as you can spare?


This sentence makes my head hurt.  You need at least two periods in there somewhere.  

[TEPaul]

Jeff Fortson:

Good to have you back. I knew you must have been pissed off but nice to have you back again. Don't forget, GOLFCLUBATLAS.com CAN BE like a barroom brawl on a Friday night in Dodge City. It helps to have a thick skin and roll with the punches. Humor never hurts either.  

[Tom_Doak]

Jeff:

Don't tell me you've been spending all this time reading THAT book.

[Mark_F]

Spring isn't the nicest time to be playing golf down under.

September, especially, can be catastrophic.

Spending four hours in LA deserves better.

[Tom Huckaby]

Barnbougle is A grail, for sure.  Most regulars here would want to play it, and yes it is diffiult to reach from the United States or Europe.

BUT... playing there is just a matter of will, time and money.  Those are things we all have in some quantity or another, and it's just a matter of spending.

The real holiest of grails require a bit more than that.  No amount of will, time or money is going to get you on the true Holy Grail:

Augusta National.

TH

[Andrew Thomson]

there are perhaps 5 courses I'd prefer to play before Augusta National.  For this I am grateful, as I'm highly unlikely ever to have the chane.

[Steve_Roths]

Marc,

Is September really a bad time to visit NZ/Taz/Aus?|

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