The course & your visit
West Lakes: sandbelt golf from a railway caboose
West Lakes Golf Club plays a tight, challenging par 70 on Adelaide’s western sandbelt at 26 Lochside Drive — the club puts itself twenty minutes from the city centre, near the beaches and the shopping mall. Couch fairways and bent greens carry all-weather play; majestic pines and natives line the holes; and the round finishes through Watering the West wetlands. Members’ guests and visitors are explicitly always welcome.
Sources: West Lakes — playing at WLGC · West Lakes — clubhouse
Pines, mounding and a wetlands finish
The course description is all texture: groups of majestic pines and native trees, undulating mounding on approaches and around the bent greens, strategic bunkering, and the prevailing south-westerly to factor. The last three holes run through the Watering the West wetlands — the round’s signature stretch. A redesign completed in early 2011 set the current tight layout, with per-hole map icons on the tour page for a closer look.
Warm-up facilities are available before the round, and visitor bookings plus equipment hire run through the pro shop pages. Dress standards apply to all golfers.
Sources: West Lakes — playing at WLGC · West Lakes — course tour
Working bees and a caboose
The club was born in humble circumstances in 1951, built by volunteer labour through the 1950s and 1960s — members working weekends alongside greenkeepers and captains, with working bees every weekend of 1951 to get a course operating in time for the first championships in 1952. The original clubhouse was an old railway caboose.
Its replacement came in apprehensive stages: showers, lockers and toilets first, then a bar, lounge, dining room and offices completed in 1975, with a dining-room atrium added in 1995 for its function vista. That arc from caboose to clubhouse is the club’s own founding story, and it still frames the place as member-built.
Sources: West Lakes — our club
The clubhouse and veranda
Floor-to-ceiling windows look across the ninth green from a clubhouse the venue bills as the best in the west — a social hub for members and visitors alike. The bar opens seven days from 10am except Christmas Day and Good Friday, with all-day espresso, pies, pasties, toasties and pizza; the lunch menu runs Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and weekends, and Wednesday nights in daylight saving add dinner with a cash jackpot draw. Gluten-free and vegetarian options are covered.
Weddings, functions, conferences and golf days run through the same rooms. Contact is +61 8 8268 3850, and the venue sits close to beaches and the West Lakes mall for anyone combining errands with eighteen.
Sources: West Lakes — clubhouse
Researched from the published sources linked above.