Penola Golf Club

Penola sits in the heart of the Coonawarra wine region, one of Australia's most celebrated viticultural districts, where the famous terra rossa soil over limestone gives the landscape a character entirely its own. The town itself is steeped in colonial history — it's the birthplace of Australia's first saint, Mary MacKillop — and the surrounding countryside has a quiet, unhurried quality that extends naturally to a day on the golf course.

As a regional club in South Australia's south-east, Penola Golf Club represents the kind of golf that sustains rural communities across the country: member-driven, unpretentious, and genuinely welcoming to visiting players passing through the wine country. Layouts in this part of SA typically work with open pastoral terrain, where the challenge comes from firm, running conditions and the wind that moves freely across the flat to gently undulating ground.

For golfers touring the Limestone Coast — stopping in at Coonawarra cellar doors, working their way between Mount Gambier and the Coorong — Penola makes a natural and worthwhile detour.