Ardath Golf Course

Ardath is a tiny wheat-belt town roughly 300 kilometres east of Perth, deep in the flat, open farming country that defines so much of inland Western Australia. The golf course here is the kind of facility that keeps rural communities stitched together — a locals' club run by and for the people who live and work on the land nearby, where a round of golf doubles as an afternoon social occasion as much as a sporting contest.

Expect the classic features of a remote Australian country course: sand or oiled-earth "scrapes" rather than grass greens, fairways that blend into the surrounding paddocks, and a layout shaped as much by the available land as by any formal design philosophy. The bush setting brings its own cast of characters — kangaroos, galahs, and wedge-tail eagles are likely as not to share the course with you.

Golf out here is unhurried and unpretentious. Visitors are almost always welcomed warmly, and the experience captures something the polished resort courses of the coast can't replicate — a genuine sense of community, and country Australia in its everyday, unvarnished form.