Frankland Golf Club

Frankland River sits in the heart of Western Australia's Great Southern region, a stretch of country better known for cool-climate wine production than for golf. The town itself is tiny — a rural service point amid rolling farmland, karri and jarrah forest corridors, and the river valleys that give this corner of the state its distinctive agricultural character. The Great Southern's landscape is genuinely beautiful in an understated way: wide skies, rich red soils, and the kind of quiet that reminds you how far you are from Perth.

Frankland Golf Club is the kind of layout that serves its community first and foremost — a country course built and maintained by the people who actually live here, where weekend competitions carry real social weight and visiting golfers are welcomed as guests rather than customers. Courses like this one are the backbone of rural Australian golf, keeping the game alive in places where no developer would ever build a resort.

If you make the detour — perhaps alongside a visit to one of the region's well-regarded wineries — come expecting honest, unfussy golf in genuinely lovely surroundings.