Golfers got a surprise when they came across a large python eating a wallaby in the middle of a golf course in tropical north Queensland.

The four-metre-long scrub python was spotted early on Saturday morning in the middle of a fairway, according to Paradise Palms general manager Declan McCollam.

"We didn't see the python capture the wallaby so we don't really know [how it was caught], we just saw the python lying in the fairway with half a wallaby in its mouth," he said.

The snake took "quite a while" to finish swallowing the wallaby joey.