Hamilton Island

By Shaz Thompson on October 3, 2016 • ( 2 Comments )

I won flights to Hamilton Island at the Qantas Link Classic in Bonville this year – thank you @QantasLink and @Bonville your sponsorship is much appreciated.

Hubby arranged yet another fantastic getaway, 3 nights on Hamilton Island (Hammo – as it is known in Australia). It is in the Great Barrier Reef and as you can imagine it is gorgeous, with turquoise water, sunshine, warmth and all things that put a smile on your face.

A reasonable start with a 9:30am flight, we have airport transfers down pat with our friendly driver Sam, no more stress waiting for taxis and wondering if they are going to show up. The flight to Hammo is 2 and a half hours and it was pretty painless really – watch a movie and you are here.

The Hamilton Island Golf Club is here and is on our bucket list – so some games at this course was a must do for us. It’s a popular place and has limited tee times, due to transport limitations and the lengthy rounds as it is a tough tough (did I say incredibly difficult) course. John could only get 2 rounds, 1:30 on Thursday (the day we arrived) and Saturday.

So off the plane we get, met by the resort staff who get your baggage from the carousel whilst you sip iced water in the air-conditioned car! You don’t even have to wait for your bags and identify them – someone attends to that. But because we weren’t going to the resort and we needed our golf clubs and golf shoes out of the suitcase – we had to hang around… There was bad news – our suitcase didn’t make it onto the flight. Damn, bugger hell, shit, shite amen…

John was wearing boat shoes and I had some light weight trainers, we were already in our golf clothes – this wasn’t too much of a drama. Our bags will catch the next flight from Sydney. They are very relaxed and would let us play in our boat shoes and trainers. And the best bit, no forms to fill in, no frustrating queues to report your baggage missing – someone did that for us. So all good – we are off.

The golf course is on Dent Island which is a 10 minute ferry ride from Hammo, it is the only way to get to the Island – I lie you could get a helicopter if you really wanted to. It was a cloudy day but hot and humid with a breeze. Thankful for the breeze because it is humid and sticky but Island golf course plus breeze spells disaster!

Some photos of the Ferry ride over to Dent Island

The service was fantastic – catch the ferry, then an air-airconditioned van picks you and takes you up the short hill to the club house, which has views to die for. This place is on par with Queenstown – seriously beautiful. Someone takes your clubs off the ferry and they magically appear on a buggy ready for you to tee off.

You cannot walk the course, there can be kilometres between tees (this is no exagerration) as it takes the natural contours of the land. To keep with the Thompson tradition I played off the mens tees – which were bizarrely rates at 126 whereas the Ladies Tees are rated 137. But still I got my 6 shots – I was happy to give it a go. We had heard about this course and the guests that played it the day before us that were staying at the resort had lost 60 golf balls between them (the lady lost 23 golf balls and her husband lost 27), we were cautious. Those of you that have played with John will know what happened…

The course is amazing but cruel, if you are slightly off target on some very narrow fairways you have a penalty – all rough is a lateral hazard. Lucky otherwise we would have been playing 3 off the tee many a time. I lost 3 balls on the course – had 32 points, I was relatively pleased. John finished 9 holes and realised that he didn’t have a hole that he wasn’t penalised on! I don’t mean to laugh, but poor guy – his ball would go slightly crooked and the wind would multiply his misfortune. Then there was more wind from the gestures that followed. Both of us managed to score better than the cruelty of the course was trying to make us, with some magnificent short page prowess. We think that John lost about 8 balls, but we did find a few – so he was up overall. This was before we found out that there were snakes – after that we didn’t bother looking for fear of the snakes.

The course is situated on a mountainous island and the fairways take the natural contour of the slopes. There are huge elevation changes and long rides with the buggy. Each hole presents an amazing vista to soften the blow of what lies ahead golf course wise. The par threes are all challenging and different. I highly recommend a round here, it is a great golf course – but bring lots of balls and lots of patience. The Video below seeks to demonstrate the long undulating curly buggy rides between green to tee.

Here are some photos of the course, from Day 1.

Seeing this photo, when you approach from the 15th Green to the 16th par 3 beside the ocean, it is quite spectacular. After pulling both shots into the bush on the left you ride to the green around a rocky outcrop on a wooden cantilever boardwalk that is several 100 feet above the ocean – no wonder they have roll bars and seat belts in the golf buggies.

We were only expecting to play 9 holes but managed to get in 18 which was great, we had to get the last ferry which was around 5:30 and then back to see if our luggage had arrived – Yay. Again the ferry ride back to Hammo was great with thunderous clouds all shades of grey, sun sparkling through them shimmering on the water – all very tropical and atmospheric.

Our car was waiting for us the other end and now it is off to see our digs, and have a lovely hot shower and clean clothes – can’t wait. First thing we do is ask if our luggage has arrived and we are told the bad news, no luggage. The hotel guest services had gone into town and bought us some provisions which was very helpful – we had PJs, toothbrush, deodorant (his and hers) toothbrush, mouthwash, dental floss. This was all very kind but all we wanted was some fresh clothes!

The digs were very nice, Qualia is on one end of the island and has 60 pavilions build on both sides of the ridge, from our pavilion you cannot see another Pavilion – we are surrounded by tropical forest with lots of noisy creatures.

A nice chilled glass of bubbly on arrival, with a full schedule of where we are to be and when. Heaven! You have your own little golf buggy for travel around the island and to and from your room to the beach, pool, spa and Long Pavilion which is where the breakfast and dining facilities are. Our room is equally spectacular and just right, with all the facilities you could want – so we are very happy little vegemites – sorry should make that happy little smelly vegemites.

That evening we went into to town to a Asian street food restaurant which was magic, we were pretty tired so we were in bed by 10:30. A thunderstorm was predicted and at about 4am there was this almighty bang, so sound that we both sat upright in bed. We then spent the next hour or so listening to the biggest down pour which continued until around 8 or 9am (lucky we had no golf booked today).

Today was going to be a day of clean knickers and Spa relaxation. A little adventure finding the spa and we had this doubles massage which we both enjoyed and both needed. All we wanted to do was fall asleep, we forced ourselves to explore the island. With John navigating and me driving. To leave the resort you pass through these large Jurassic Park style gates that open and allow you out. Proper road rules apply to your golf buggy, the most annoying one being that you have to wear seat belts. When you are used to just hopping in and out of a golf cart – it is very hard to remember to put your safety belts on.

We explored one tree hill, both sides of the Island, the Yacht Club, Marina. Hamilton Island is a small place but very well done and everything is very chilled and beautiful.

Some photos

Such excitement when we got home, our little suitcase was there to greet us – clean clothes.

Dinner was at Romanos, which was okay. It was early to bed as 1) all this lazing around is exhausting and 2) we had an early rise for the revenge on the Hamilton Island Golf Course.

Breakfast early, Ferry to Dent Island on the course by 7:20am. It was a gorgeous day, we were front of the field, John felt inspired – he was going to get a hole in one and play great. I mean what could go wrong.

More of the same, except being weather. We both parred the first, life was good. I had a cracking front 9 – 4 over off the mens tees. John’s day was not so great and then mine got just as bad. I lost 5 golf balls during the day, 8 over the weekend, I finished with 1 golf ball. I don’t think that I have lost 8 golf balls in 5 years… John also had an ordinary front nine but a better back 9. Boy it was hard, and these were benign friendly conditions.

More photos of the golf course today.

A video of more green to tee rides and the one that goes out over the ocean.

Off to the pool for a lazy afternoon, here we just watched the world go by, then the AFL Grand Final via Foxtel Go on the iPad. More Oysters for lunch – oh what a struggle this was.

Oysters for lunch again….

Watching the AFL Grand Final

Dinner at the Long Pavilion where they talked us into the degustation which is their signature thing. But with Scallops, Marin and Lobster as 3 out of the 4 savoury dishes we knew that a challenge had been set for the Chef. He did okay and replaced it with Mushrooms, Broccoli 3 ways and Cheesy thing. But we still got charged the $190 each which we thought was a bit steep. But never the less an enjoyable atmosphere, a fabulous location and a beautiful setting, and of course – great company!

Last day, lie in – Flight is at 11:20. Hoorah – there is no chance of a lie in, if it isn’t early tee off times, thunderstorms or the seriously noisy chatty birds that just walk down the street (on the road) with serious attitude and squeal away, and then just as you think they are finished – they start again. See video below for a little bit of an idea of what I am talking about.