I achieved a golfing first this morning.
Not far from our place of residence this week in Wales is the Alice Springs Golf Club. The club was founded in 1989 and is located in the stunning Usk Valley in Monmouthshire County, South Wales and just 15 minutes from Newport and venue for the ISPS Handa Wales Open.
15,220 kilometers – the distance from the Alice Springs GC in Wales to it’s golfing cousin in the very heart of Australia.
The club was named after the wife of the owner, who’s name naturally was Alice, and with course laid out among a number of springs to be found about the two courses – the Usk Course and the shorter Monnow Course.
Nearly four years ago in December 2010 I visited for a first time the Alice Springs Golf Club in the ‘red heart’ of Australia.
Welcome to the Alice Springs Golf Club in Wales. (Photo – www.golfbytourmiss.com)
Australia’s Alice Springs Golf Club was founded in 1933 and lays claim to the ‘Hottest Golf Course in the World’. And while it’s Wales cousin is surrounded by other courses, Alice Springs Golf Club in Australia’s Northern Territory is the most remote golf course in the world, located as it is some 1,500 kilometers in either direction from both Darwin to the north and Adelaide to the south.
In contrast to the lush-green, parkland pair of courses I visited here in Wales, the Australian Alice Springs course is a like a golfing oasis in the desert and akin to the superb resort courses you find in Arizona.
And what was a little bizarre is that Alice Springs in very center of the world’s driest continent also got it’s name just like the Alice Springs I visited this morning in lush Wales.
The unmistakable red-colored MacDonnell Ranges standing watch over the Alice Springs Golf Club in the heart of Australia.
In fact, Alice Springs in the Northern Territory was the name given to the waterhole discovered and named by Government Surveyor W W Mills in March 1871, whilst exploring the MacDonnell Ranges during the construction of the Overland Telegraph Line, after Alice Todd, wife of the Superintendent of Telegraphs, Sir Charles Todd.
The Alice Springs Telegraph Station was built adjacent to the waterhole.
However, this dual naming created such confusion for administrators in Adelaide that on 31 August 1933 the township of Stuart was officially gazetted Alice Springs.
* Hereunder is a handful of photographs from my visit to the Alice Springs Golf Club in Wales.
Alice Springs Golf Club – Home to two golf courses in the Usk and the shorter Monnow.
Alice Springs GC, Wales – First hole. (Photo – www.golfbytourmiss.com)
