Bonville Golf Resort, Coffs Harbour review: The rough with the smooth

The combination of a beautiful course and excellent restaurant appeals to the retired golfer in Bruce Elder.

I had never thought of staying at a golf resort. A very dubious local champion at the age of 14, I turned my back on the game after one too many blustery encounters with a roaring southerly on a NSW south-coast course.

One look at the thousands of densely planted, flooded gums that fringe every fairway at Bonville Golf Resort, a superb golf course on the hinterland of Coffs Harbour and Sawtell, and the wise and laconic advice of the man who taught me to play the infuriating game came rushing back.

"If you're behind a tree," Tommy Mulvihill used to say, "always aim for the tree. If you hit it, then you can say 'bloody good shot'. If you miss it, then you have achieved what you were planning to do all along."

Mind you, Bonville is no ordinary golf course. Its designer, Terry Watson, was asked to create something similar to the home of the US Masters, Augusta National in Georgia. He created 18 holes edged by flooded gums, so any wayward player is likely to end up behind a tree and only those who shoot straight and true will come away with a respectable score.

Every hole is created so each group of golfers thinks they are the only players on the course. There are 12 kilometres of paths between greens and fairways. No one is allowed to walk the course; everyone has to drive a buggy, or "electric cart", as they are now called.

The club brochure says the course is in 80 hectares of forest "with an additional 80 hectares of natural bushland, which contains pockets of sub-tropical rainforest". As well as flooded gums, there are blackbutt, camphor laurel and tallowwood. "Grass trees are used to indicate distance from the green - one tree is 100 metres, two is 150 metres and three is 200 metres." With so much shrubbery, Bonville is a natural sanctuary for many native species. In the evenings, swamp wallabies and kangaroos are said to graze on the light rough.

All this is true. In the evening, as we stroll to the Flooded Gums Restaurant - overlooking the 18th fairway - I notice wallabies munching on the edges of the near-perfect greensward that is the fairway in front of our room.

And what a restaurant. This must be among the best dining on any golf course in Australia. Apparently, award-winning chef George Francisco, of Jonah's at Whale Beach, pops in regularly to advise on menu selection and planning. It's a small room overlooking the golf course, with only the idle chatter of a few bragging golfers at the bar to be heard. We enjoy such locally sourced delights as an entree of Woolgoolga lobster and angel-hair pasta and roasted jewfish with lobster, scallop and prawn boudin, ruby grapefruit and calamari. The jewfish is cooked perfectly and flattered by the textures of crisp calamari and the seafood base. It's great value at $39.