“What is that?”

I look down at the piece of (what might be) food in front of me, then over at my buddy Miles. “Just eat it,” Miles says. “And keep your eyes on the road.” I munch on whatever it is—the texture brings to mind tree bark. Miles looks at me. “That was kangaroo jerky.”

We’re in Western Australia, on the remote A1 Eyre Highway (Australia’s iconic answer to Route 66), playing golf on Nullarbor Links, the world’s longest golf course. Well, at the moment we’re driving between the 9th and 10th holes. Commutes here tend to run a little long from green to next tee, since the course is 850 miles.

Stretching from the seaport of Ceduna to the Wild West gold mining town of Kalgoorlie, Nullarbor Links is the brainchild of Bob Bongiorno and Alf Caputo. For decades, Aussie truckers had been gunning their ‘Road Trains’ (Mad Max-style trucks two or three carriages long) across the vast Nullarbor Plains. To give them something to do, a golf course was constructed along the Eyre Highway in 2009. Almost immediately, accidents along the Nullarbor plummeted. And an Extreme Outback Golf Adventure was born.

“Here we are: Cocklebiddy.”

I pull us into the 10th hole, alongside a single roadhouse—an oasis of semi-civilization in the vast Outback. These roadhouses don’t offer Wi-Fi or today’s newspaper (unless a trucker has kindly dropped one off), but they do provide plenty of Outback essentials—food (including, sometimes, crocodile souvlaki), coffee (including, sometimes, “Humpalicious camel milk coffee”), plus gas, lodging, scorecard stamping, and, in our case, a playing partner.

The author plays golf among kangaroos at Nullarbor Links course in Western Australia. Photo by Miles Ashton

“G’day mate.”

Steve Lee, a 65-year-old grain silo worker from Port Lincoln, South Australia, looks up at me. Steve’s wearing motorcycle gear and is perched on a 1450cc Harley Davidson Night Train. I note that Steve has welded a pipe onto the front of his bike, which holds a 3-wood, 7-iron, and putter.

“I just figured it would be fun,” Steve says, casually teeing up in an ant-hole (causing ants to angrily swarm over his ball). Around us, hundreds of locusts—yes, locusts—are jumping to and fro. Steve slams a 3-wood over them, down the middle. “Take it easy, that’s the secret,” he tells me with a grin, and picks up his tee. “What’d you shoot on the front?” I ask. Steve looks at his card. “Forty-one,” he says. My shoulders sag. Even with three clubs, Steve is kicking my ass.