I grew up learning to play golf in the Seven Mile Beach area. Royal Hobart Golf Club (RHGC) and Tasmania Golf Club were the two best courses, both ranked in the top 50 in Australia back then. I was lucky enough to be a member of both- imagine paying less than $150 a year, combined, so your annoying son disappears for the entire day. Seems like a good deal.
Both clubs had moved from locations closer to the city, a trend repeated over and over throughout Australia as clubs either grew, were captured by the allure of a new facility or found the financial security achieved by moving far too attractive. Some of these moves produced incredible golf courses while others led to the disappearance of local facilities and green spaces.
This happened all well before I started playing golf, but it was pivotal in the genesis of Seven Mile Beach.
Back when Junior Members were regularly summoned to appear in front of the committee for not having their knee-high socks pulled up, for being too loud on the practice putting green, for picking up and hitting range balls without paying for them or stealing money from the honor bar (of which three of those were definitely true), a few of us decided that we weren’t going to go upstairs (upstairs, referring to the “fancy” part of the clubhouse) to spare further examination. Instead, the best spot for a lunchtime hamburger, The Oasis, was just a few minutes drive away on the other side of the Airport. Anyone familiar with the area was aware of the quality of the burger and the randomness that this place even existed.
After lunch we would sometimes run out over the dunes onto the beach to hit bunker shots and mess around in general. I had spent lots of time down on the beach hitting balls with my Grandfather, who, as a Seve Ballesteros fan, thought that hitting long irons off the sand was going to be good for my ball striking. He may have been onto something.
It was during these lunch breaks that the comment or question often arose: “Why didn’t RHGC move into the dunes when the club moved ?” Often leading to “I wish RHGC would move into the dunes” to finally “I hope somebody builds a course on the dunes”.
The concept of someone building a course didn’t seem serious at the time. To us, golf courses were only built in Queensland for resorts and housing developments. Although there had been a pretty interesting development approved in principle back in the late eighties (see fig1 & fig2), it seemed pretty ambitious and as much as cable skiing sounds fun the “Resort Course” label raises a few red flags. Fortunately the crash in the eighties ended “The Island State Resort”.
Through the years I often heard whispers of a new development for the Seven Mile Beach Peninsula and nothing would ever come to fruition and no Development Applications were ever lodged.
I went on to be a professional golfer and was lucky enough to play some of the greatest courses on the planet, seeing more of the world than I could ever have imagined. This exposure led me to believe that the dunes of Seven Mile Beach must be great land for golf.
Back in the late nineties, I was playing in the Canon Challenge and my playing partner was Michael Clayton. Mike was starting to transition away from his playing career and move into his design career, although I’m pretty sure he plays and practices more now than he ever did.
I basically said to Mike: “You should build a course at Seven Mile Beach”. I would imagine back then Mike ignored me without fully dismissing the idea. (As an aside, I can’t imagine what it would have been like for spectators to have had the pleasure of watching Clayton and a youthful, hot tempered version of myself cursing and abusing themselves. The odd helicopter and smattering of bag smashes thrown in for extra entertainment. It would have been “something”.)
Years later at another Australian Tour event, Mike started telling me about a course he was building in Bridport. My reaction to this was: “Why the hell would anyone build a golf course in Bridport ? You have Seven Mile Beach right there, next to Hobart and the Airport.” The next day, Mike came armed with his laptop and pictures of Barnbougle Dunes. It was at this point that I agreed that building a course at Bridport wasn’t a bad idea.
With the success of Barnbougle Dunes I assumed that the next logical place for a ‘Golf Destination Resort’ to be built is Seven Mile Beach but years pass and nothing happened.
In 2008/2009 I started to really wonder why hadn’t anyone ever built anything, or any type of development on the peninsula ? Thinking there must be a reason. I started looking over all the strategic plans, council documents, Airport Master Plans, for anything that would prove you couldn’t develop the area, and what I found was the opposite, albeit with one condition.
All of the strategic plans, discussion papers or future uses had to take into account the Mining Lease (fig 3.)
The Strategic plans encouraged proposals that included uses such as Tourism, recreation and residential components. But the mining lease area was always going to be difficult to develop into, so I treated it as a no go area.
Armed with the information and belief that there was nothing-in principle-stopping a golf course being built in the area outside of the Mining Lease, I ordered topographical maps, spent a day walking over the site, took a lot of pictures and emailed Mike that night. The rest, you could say, is history…..
