The course & your visit
South Lakes: pelicans, lakes and a pioneering estate
South Lakes Golf Club at Billabong Road, Goolwa, opened in 1966 as the first club to integrate a holiday and residential community with its course — a model now commonplace, pioneered here. The club says it has since grown the largest membership of any regional South Australian club. The golf plays through gentle undulating ground between lakes, reeds and paperbarks on the south coast, with the birdlife — 88 recorded species — as much a feature as the fairways.
Sources: South Lakes — home · South Lakes — overview & birdlife
The birds come first
Few clubs give wildlife its own course-overview page. South Lakes sits between high-energy surf beaches, the Lower Lakes and Goolwa Channel, the Murray Mouth and the RAMSAR-listed Coorong — and the course’s lakes and coastal scrub form a corridor the club counts 88 bird species using, with 40 more recorded nearby. The Australian Pelican is the emblem: gliding on the lakes or soaring overhead in formation.
The 18-hole tour page itself is a hole index without written notes, so the playing detail lives in the visit rather than the preview. The setting — dunes, lakes, woodland and rural pasture running to the Southern Mount Lofty Ranges — is the constant.
Sources: South Lakes — overview & birdlife · South Lakes — 18-hole tour
Visiting
Visitors are welcome at all times except Wednesdays and Saturdays before 3pm, when tee times belong to the members’ competition — during those windows visitors may only play if entered in the competition with a current GolfLink ID and the Director of Golf’s approval. Check in at the pro shop twenty minutes early, give 24 hours for cancellations, and dress neat casual throughout. The fee schedule covers adult and junior eighteen and nine holes plus cart hire and an unlimited-holes twilight rate after 4pm.
The pro shop on 8555 2078 takes bookings by phone, email or in person and opens daily 7am to 7pm. Get Into Golf and MyGolf junior programs run alongside the main game.
Sources: South Lakes — visitor bookings
Bistro, bar and SHANX mini golf
The clubhouse runs bar, bistro and gaming with lunch seven days, all-day dining and à la carte dinners Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays — plus a Thursday-night schnitzel feast with raffles and lucky-door prizes. Functions use the same rooms. A brand-new SHANX mini golf course — the same operator behind the Little Para and Regency Park courses — takes online bookings with kids’ parties and a social-member rate.
Sources: South Lakes — bistro & bar · South Lakes — SHANX mini golf
Researched from the published sources linked above.