The best thing about Canberra is the air. Now, now – none of your cheek. Not the stuff out of the buffoons we send to the Capital to look after our interests, the gibbering nincompoops whose bluster could power so many of Canberra’s muchphotographed hot-air balloons.
No. Rather, we’re talking the sweet, pure, high-country air where Canberra sits, incongruously, atop the Great Dividing Range, the plateau lands at the northern edge of the Australian Alps. Where the weather might be described as ‘crisp’, or, if a southerly sweeps in from snow-capped Brindabellas, ‘Sweet Jesus! It’s Baltic! Lock up the animals!’
For golf, though, the weather is pure. Even when minus temperatures begat a thick morning frost, it means a clear, sunny, still day. Cold, sure. But, at any time, golfers can don the invention known as ‘clothing’. A beanie, a fleece, a body-hugging ‘skin’ of sorts, and you can stride onto that first tee, suck in that cold, sweet air, and set that Hot Dot free.
Enough with the air? So what about the air? So this: because Canberra is quite high – Mount Majura is 888 metres above sea level – the air is relatively thin. And thus, your golf ball will encounter less friction, and know greater penetration, and distance, than it would in the soupy humidity of your coastal flats. It means one less club. It is no bad thing.
You’ll use most of your clubs around the 27 holes of Royal Canberra Golf Club, the spearmint chocolate jewel of the greater Monaro. Royal Canberra is a pristine and manicured property that borders Lake Burley Griffin and the Governor-General’s place at Yarralumla.
The course photographs beautifully, particularly after the mowers have run pretty strips across the
