Ivanhoe Golf Course

Far out in outback New South Wales, Ivanhoe sits at the edge of the Barrier Highway in Shields country — a small pastoral town where the population barely reaches 3 figures and the nearest city is hundreds of kilometres away. Golf here is about as far from a manicured resort experience as the game gets, and that is entirely the point. The Ivanhoe Golf Course belongs to a proud tradition of remote Australian bush golf, where locals have carved a layout from the red earth and scrub with limited resources and considerable ingenuity.

Like many outback New South Wales courses, Ivanhoe almost certainly plays on browns rather than greens — compacted dirt "greens" oiled to create a workable putting surface, a practical adaptation to an environment where maintaining grass through scorching summers and scarce rainfall is simply not viable. It is a style of course that surprises first-time visitors and charms those who appreciate golf stripped to its essentials.

Playing here is less about scoring and more about the experience of being somewhere genuinely remote, under an enormous sky, with the quiet of the Australian interior all around you.