The longest hole in Tassie
Course 61 for 2021 – Mountain Vista, Waratah, Tas
Wild, woolly and way out in Waratah
Nomadic_golfer : November 2021
Par 70, 5274m, slope 112, $15 green fee (9 hole course)
8 par3s 103-185m, 4 par4s 252-280m, 6 par5s 432-579m
Thanks Wara, ta
This place is a bit different. It starts off with 2 tough 180m par3s. And I’ve never played a course where you have to wait until the 7th to see the first par 4, of which there are only 2 on the 9 hole course. It also has the longest hole in Tassie, the 579m 5th, and with the soft fairways that give minimal run, it plays just under 1 kilometre!
At the end of a wet Spring (& they get about 60 inches of rain per year here) the course was very soft, not squelchy wet, but soft all over. Fairways have heaps of lush natural grass, making it a tough walk, and the greens are similarly soft and very slow. It is a beautiful setting – surrounded by forests on the outskirts of the remote mining town of Waratah in Tassie’s NW wilderness. The air is the cleanest in the world here and its full of bird noises all around the course.
There are a few pines/ cypress and lots of row of gums; in fact you play the last 5 holes gradually making your way west, up and back between rows of gums. And there’s plenty of water to avoid here, from little streams running through 2 and 3 to a set of dams dropping down a rise that intersects about 4 of the holes.
The par 3s are tough, the 2 par 4s are not (both under 280m) and the 5’s are a good mix with the shortest one 5 (435m 3rd) the pick of them. It requires a drive through a bit of a chute of gums, turns right, with the second required to carry a dam about 100m out. It’s a pretty hole and gives you a chance while also presenting a couple of opportunities to ruin your card. The ‘longest hole’, 579m 5th has those rows of gums all the way down both sides, OB all the way right and dams crossing the fairway at about 250m, from where it moves slightly uphill just to add to the slog!
Overall, this is good local fun that favours those with a bit of length. Surfaces are soft and fittingly, a little ‘wild’. For a 9 hole course, it does have a lot of unique/ unusual features
