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The idea took shape when Caputo and Bongiorno, now good friends, sat in a bar and brainstormed "over a glass or two of red wine," Caputo said. "All good ideas come out of a glass of red, don't they?" Out of that session came the setup of the course and the thought of working with local motels and tourist attractions.
Caputo says the average group of golfers will take about four days to complete the course, which, at its most eastern point at Ceduna is 1,300 miles west of Sydney. More than 250,000 tourists annually make the trip across the hot, arid Nullarbor on the Eyre Highway, and there soon could be more: Caputo says a British travel promoter wants to put together a 10-day package which includes Nullarbor Links and topflight courses in Adelaide and Perth.
Included on the Nullarbor journey is the longest stretch of straight road on any highway in Australia. After golfers leave the par-4, 340-yard hole at the Caiguna roadhouse, they won't have to turn their steering wheels for 90 miles.
When they arrive at the next hole at the Balladonia Motel, they can take a side trip to an area commemorating the July 1979 fall to earth of the NASA research laboratory Skylab, which landed in fiery chunks around Balladonia. U.S. President Jimmy Carter is said by locals to have phoned the motel's manager to apologize, and the area's shire ranger, David Somerville, was photographed giving a NASA official a littering ticket, which the council later waived.
The next hole is a par-3, 155-yarder at the Fraser Range — home of the largest eucalyptus hardwood forest in Australia, some trees more than 100 feet tall. There's also a working sheep station nearby.
Since the holes are designed to be played from either direction, they are not numbered. So the hole at Caiguna near the long stretch of road is called Ninety Mile Straight, followed by Skylab, and then Sheep's Back.
And don't forget Caputo's and Bongiorno's favorite hole — the 19th.
"We've got a great bar at either end in Ceduna or Kalgoorlie, but the beauty of this course is that every hole has a 19th hole," says Caputo, laughing. "Some just steps from the green. How good is that?"
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