Winchelsea Golf Club

Winchelsea Golf Club is at 45 Anderson Street in Winchelsea, the inland Surf Coast town, about 40 minutes from the house. It's a small country club, and it isn't trying to be anything else.

The course is played as 18 holes over a nine-hole layout, played from multiple tee positions. On the club's figures it measures 5,317 metres, with a par of 67 for men and 72 for women. The club says the fairways and grass greens have been heavily renovated since 2010, and a recycled water system and a dam keep it watered.

Come here for something different from the big coastal courses: a cheap, relaxed round with locals, on a course with a proper story behind it.

The club was formed in 1933 on the old site of the Winchelsea Turf Club, a well-known racing club in the 19th century. The racecourse grandstand was the first clubhouse (it's since been demolished). A small clubhouse went up before the Second World War, and during the war it was the local base for the Volunteer Air Observers Corps, staffed around the clock.

For its first 30 years, golf was only played from March to September, and the club went into recess over summer. Now it's played all year. For a long time the greens were sand scrapes. That changed in 1989, after a big storm blew tonnes of topsoil off a potato paddock and onto the road between Winchelsea and Inverleigh. The road had to be cleared, the club used the soil to build greens, and they were first played in 1990.

The greens have since been replaced with drought-tolerant wintergreen couch. The club says that became urgent after six of its bent grass greens died in two weeks under stage 4 water restrictions during the drought. A dam built with a State Government water grant has helped since.

Allow about 40 minutes inland from the house in north Torquay. There's off-street parking at the house for several cars, and if you'd like somewhere to keep the clubs between rounds, ask us.

Winchelsea is a handy stop on an inland day. Barwon Park Mansion, a bluestone National Trust house built in 1869 to 1871 for Thomas and Elizabeth Austin, is at 105 Inverleigh Road. It's open for guided tours on set days (Wednesdays and Sundays outside winter when we checked), so check the National Trust website first. Further on, Forrest is one of the best-known mountain bike spots in Victoria; our mountain biking guide covers it. And if you're coming back from the Twelve Apostles the inland way, you'll pass through Winchelsea anyway.