Great Golf on the Melbourne Sandbelt

An intimate, contemporary portrait of one of the world's greatest golfing regions — eight clubs, ten courses, and a stretch of sandy, fast-draining soil in Melbourne's south-east that has produced a concentration of world-class golf unmatched anywhere on the planet.

With the majority of images captured in 2026, Gary Lisbon has documented the Sandbelt at the peak of its beauty and conditioning. Never have these courses collectively looked as good as they do right now — the product of more than a decade of faithful restoration by a new generation of architects working to honour the original visions of Alister MacKenzie, Alex Russell, C.H. Alison and their contemporaries.

Over 210 photographs, ground-level and aerial, span all ten courses: Royal Melbourne's East and West, Kingston Heath, Metropolitan, Victoria, Yarra Yarra, Commonwealth, Huntingdale, and Peninsula Kingswood's North and South.

In a quirky addition, Gary has built his own version of the ultimate Sandbelt composite course, taking selected holes from each of the ten. That idea is what you've been playing with here: build your own composite and turn it into a calendar, a slideshow or a set of prints.