From the rolling hills of the Hunter Valley wine country, to Newcastle’s beachside suburbs and north to the holiday haven of Port Stephens, New South Wales’ Hunter region is a golfer’s playground.
If you are planning a golf trip to the Hunter, any time is a great time to take in the sights of wine country. But summer is perhaps the most vibrant and exciting time. Towards the end of January, vintage begins and the Hunter Valley becomes alive with both hand and machine picking in the vineyards. Warm days mean mornings on the course, afternoons exploring the vineyards and evenings cooling by the pool with a glass of local wine in your hand.
November through to March is also Day On The Green concert season when wineries, like Bimbadgen and Roche Estate, play host to local and international acts. The likes of Paul Kelly, Bernard Fanning, Missy Higgins and Ian Moss as well as Sting and The Killers are scheduled to perform this summer.
But golf remains a year-round attraction for visitors to wine country and the mainstay has long been the Cypress Lakes Resort.
The course celebrated its 30th anniversary this year and much has changed since American designer Steve Smyers signed off on the project. Back then, the clubhouse was a small building that still stands near the 1st green. By 1995, the hub of the layout was relocated to a luxurious resort building and luxury villas that now cover the hillside overlooking the course.
After several years of decline in the 2000s, a change of ownership in 2013 brought much needed investment into the course as well as the resort and both have been improving ever since.
The resort, now known as Oaks Cypress Lakes Resort, was named Australia’s Best Golf Hotel in 2018 and, again, in 2021. The course also made it back into the national ranking. It was ranked by this magazine as the No.97 Public Access Course in Australia for 2017, after disappearing from all ranking lists for nearly six years. In 2021, it was ranked No.66 and expectations are it will rise again when the ranking is published again in January 2023.
If you haven’t visited Cypress
