Ferrari, McLaren and Lamborghini put luxury first on a Tasmania tour
There are ruffled feathers and ultra-smooth steering on a Tasmania tour that includes luxury cars and one of the world’s best golf courses.
“Chook up ahead. Chook. Up. Ahead.” The voice of Matt Thio, my spotter, rings through the two-way radio. Chook ahead. Got it. I grip the wheel, and within seconds I’m upon the offending bird. It looks at me. Then at the road. Then at me. It takes a short, suicidal step towards the bitumen, but before it has a chance to cross into cliche – and the avian afterlife – I’ve flashed by. In the mirror, I spy the bemused broiler cocking its head inquisitively. It’s not every day in rural northwestern Tasmania you see a $600,000 gunmetal grey Lamborghini whiz past.
It’s an early autumn afternoon, and I am 200km into a 350km loop from Launceston through the Meander Valley and up to the Great Western Tiers mountain range towards the state’s west coast. But this is no regular road trip. Already today, my wife Debbie-Lee and I have been behind the wheels of a cherry-red Ferrari F8 Tributo, a deep-purple McLaren 570S, and a white Aston Martin DB11 V12. But for now, it’s the Lamborghini Huracan EVO that’s got me in its grip.
The car, which can go from 0-100km/h in 2.9 seconds, may have just triumphed in a very literal game of chicken, but it would be only a fanatical fowl who might take on this machine. The Huracan is every bit the bull that adorns the Lambo’s famous badge. With a 5200cc V10 engine and a top speed of 325km/h, it’s less car than rocket ship. Indeed, its dash looks like something NASA might have designed (I admit to more than one “What does this button do?” moment). All grunt and affront, the Lambo has been described as the obnoxious teenager of the luxury car world, and with every beastly rev of the accelerator, I can feel myself regressing to my 16-year-old self. It takes a cursory word from my wife to break the spell. “Get your hand off it, Tim,” she says. Touche.
We zoom up a hill towards Mount Roland as the gorgeous Meander Valley, in all its bucolic beauty, blurs in our peripheries and the hint of Cradle Mountain lurks beneath clouds to our west. With stops every 50km or so at variously quaint and gorgeous locales – Deloraine, Sheffield and Chudleigh among them – we, and three other couples on this rather outrageous Sunday drive, swap cars and tales of horsepower as the day rolls on.
It’s all thanks to Prancing Horse, a company that started out as a Ferrari-hire business but whose owners soon realised there was a market for guided luxury-car outings (it also offers experiences in NSW, Victoria and South Australia). Our vehicles are bookended by a brace of speedy spotters – our amiable hosts Matt, Jessie, Fulvio and Erik – in Alfa Romeos, who keep us alert to road hazards and oncoming traffic/poultry. The oper-ation also involves a professional photographer who at the end of the day creates a pictorial package for participants.
We stop at beautiful Ghost Rock Wines, at Northdown, for lunch, and I look forlornly at the wine menu. There shall be no vino for us today – there is a strict zero-alcohol policy; indeed we were breathalysed at the start of the journey. Agreeably, however, we are gifted a bottle – I recommend the pinot – to go.
We meander back to Launceston, where awe-struck children line the street to watch us sit in the afternoon traffic. I idle at the lights like Oscar Piastri on an F1 grid, and small faces crack into huge smiles, then it’s back to Peppers Silo, exhilarated and exhausted. Our beautifully appointed room overlooks the Tamar River and out towards Cataract Gorge, and we marvel in the design ingenuity of the hotel, which has been converted from historic grain silos. Downstairs, at the restaurant, the flame grill is firing, but we can’t resist the local oysters and crayfish in buttermilk with pickled cucumber. That’s followed by a delicious smoked pork collar with salsa verde, and kohlrabi and beetroot jus, and we heed our waitress’s advice to tackle the dark chocolate cigar with coffee marscapone and blueberry jam.
We wake the following day, check out and wait for a very literal lift to our next destination. Ben, a lumbering chap in a blue uniform, greets us with a smile. “You’ve probably done this before?” he asks. We haven’t. “First time in a chopper? Wow.”
We climb into the front seats of a red Unique Charters aircraft, and prepare for our maiden flight. We are being ferried from Launceston to Barnbougle golf resort, in the northeast. We head up the river, then north over the Tamar Valley and above Mount Arthur. Wineries, dairies and farmland unfurl beneath us as the Pacific Ocean appears on the horizon. Soon, the 6ha waterfront Barnbougle property comes into view, the pilot banks hard and we descend. Golfers look on as we drop softly, if not inconspicuously, to the helipad, a lazy shank from the first tee.
Barnbougle is fast becoming Australasia’s most popular golfing destination. Featuring two-world class courses, The Dunes and Lost Farm (plus 14-hole short course Bougle Run), the resort hosts up to 50,000 visitors a year. Formerly a potato farm, the beachside property was reimagined in 2004 when it opened as The Dunes, a world-class links course. Its owner, Richard Sattler, whose working-class roots are something of a legend in Tasmania, reportedly had never hit a golf ball until the course was completed. Lost Farm, its 20-hole sibling course, was completed in 2010.
We check into our Lost Farm accommodation – a motel-style room but not as you know it. Our studio (one of 50) has a lovely view out to Bass Strait, and a Chesterfield couch. There are more luxurious options at The Dunes, but ours has a distinct advantage – it’s roughly 50m from the first tee, and we have an appointment with Lost Farm.
We meet Roscoe Banks, the resort’s golf director, who kits us out with hire clubs and leads us out to the first tee on a bluebird day. Taking advantage of the course’s wide fairways, we’re away, trundling off into the green and blue yonder.
Designed by golf architects Coore & Crenshaw, Lost Farm – rated No. 23 in the world last year by US Golf Digest – challenges golfers with its undulating fairways and tricky greens. Uniquely, it has two extra holes: 13a, a sneaky false-fronted par 3; and 18a, a tiny par 3 with a green that sits a heckle’s length below the clubhouse bar. Here, golfers regale each other on the deck or around the fire with tales of yore and fore.
The nearby Lost Farm restaurant, which sits atop a huge dune, is an impressive building, offering 180-degree views of course and coast. And its menu is on par. Our waiter suggests we start with fresh scallops from nearby hamlet Bridport before moving on to the delicious Cape Grim eye fillet, roasted Portobello mushrooms and potato gratin with red wine jus. Guiltily, we order the sticky date pudding, justified in the knowledge Barnbougle is a walking-only club – there are no motorised carts. We’ll burn it all off tomorrow at The Dunes.
We rise early and meet the gregarious Banks, who ferries us the couple of kilometres out to The Dunes clubhouse. Our tee time is 7am, but we arrive early and are offered fresh tracks: first on the course. Wallaby prints disturb the dew, and we delight in the contours of the par-5 first hole’s rolling fairway, its hills and troughs interrupted by the occasional sandtrap and dense, native grass. It is breathtakingly beautiful.
Designed by architect Tom Doak and former PGA player Mike Clayton, The Dunes is, more than any other course in Australia, part of its landscape. One minute you’re wandering a lush fairway and the next you’re trundling through the spinifex atop a mountain of sand looking to Bass Strait.
It has for many years been rated as the best public course in Australia, and the fourth best in the country overall, behind esteemed private sandbelt courses Royal Melbourne, Kingston Heath and Peninsula Kingswood.
Indeed, US Golf Digest rates The Dunes the world’s 11th best course. Its highlights are many, but its monster bunker, nicknamed Jaws, on the par-4 fourth is the stuff of legend. It is a 10m vertiginous wall of sand that sits below an elevated, driveable green, and, true to form, I find myself in the belly of the beast.
With a name like The Dunes, it’s no surprise the sand is hard to avoid. But it’s the pretty 17th and 18th holes that take the cake. Wallabies rustle about in the rough as picturesque sandy beaches guide weary golfers home.
We retire to the warm, timbered clubhouse for lunch, and a fellow traveller informs us Barnbougle comes from the Celtic for “Shepherd’s Hill”. We order the lamb shanks in the resort’s nomenclative honour, and all too soon – but right on time – Adam House, from Luxury Tours Tasmania, is here to pick us up. We pile into his limousine-style van, all leathered upholstery and engaging conversation, and head back towards Launceston Airport. House asks how we played. We plead the fifth amendment, and he laughs.
“What happens in Tassie stays in Tassie.”
IN THE KNOW
Prancing Horse will return to northern Tasmania next year, offering one-day driving experiences on Friday, Saturday and Sunday ex-Launceston from February 9-25; $5990 for two, including two nights with dinner at Peppers Silo Launceston. Other tours run in Yarra Valley, Victoria, the Adelaide Hills, and Sydney, Kiama and the Southern Highlands in NSW.
Unique Charters helicopter day packages from Launceston to Barnbougle from $950 a person. Overnight packages with Peppers Silo available on request.
Visitors can play Barnbougle at The Dunes or Lost Farm (18 holes – $134/$149 low/high season). Golf and accommodation packages from $416 a person, twin-share, for overnight stays at the Lodge and rounds at Lost Farm and The Dunes.
Luxury Tours Tasmania offers transfers and charters out of Launceston.
Tim Douglas was a guest of Prancing Horse, Unique Charters, Barnbougle and Luxury
Tours.
