Tour the best golf courses in Australia

To those of us in the Western Hemisphere, Australia might as well be on another planet. It takes the better part of a full day to travel there and back from much of the continental United States. The wildlife is entirely different. The toilets flush in the opposite direction.

The golf is different, too, in a way that makes it as tantalizing a place to bring your clubs as any. Not only is Presidents Cup host Royal Melbourne there, so are a bevy of other world-class courses, all playable by faraway visitors. The Melbourne Sandbelt is hard to beat, but there's also the Mornington Peninsula, Tasmania and even sparsely-populated, agrarian King Island, all sending a siren call across the globe to adventurous golfers.

Here's a visual sampler of what kind of golfing delights await in Australia: