Melbourne’s Little Bourke Street branch of bar-cum-mini-golf course Holey Moley has had a facelift, with nine brand new holes (four of which are exclusive) brimming with putty puns and nostalgic pop-culture references up the wazoo.
Sink your ball under a static TV to trigger a spooky surprise at the Putt a Ring On It hole; go looney tuney sinking baskets at the Hoop! There it is hole; or meet a giant selfie-ready plush toy at the Sugar, Slice and All Things Nice hole, the pinkest hole you’ve ever seen, saturated in fallen ice cream cones and sparkly love heart eye emojis.
If that’s not enough to stir you up to putt, they’ve also stirred up three new cocktails – see if you can guess which bevvie goes with which hole! There’s the Sweet Poison, garnished with a lychee ‘eyeball’ and a syringe of blueberry ‘blood’; Michael’s Secret Stuff mixed with blue Gatorade and served in a protein shaker, and the pinker-than-pink Bubble Trouble garnished with musk sticks and a puff of fairy floss.
Other holes making their debut on the Melbourne city green include Vincent Van Golf, which will have you raring to cut your ear off and slam down some yellow paint like a real Post-Impressionist painter; the A Hop, Skip and a Gump invites you to take a seat at a park bench and dwell on how life is like a container of confectionaries; and say "you beauty!" to a sizeable reptile at the True Blue Green.
Holey Moley’s winning combination of pop-culture, nostalgia, alcoholic bevvies, light physical activity and filling the space of former nightlife destinations (the Little Bourke Street venue is at the former site of nightclubs Tunnel and Sorry Grandma, and one of the Sydney locations controversially took over from live music stalwart Newtown Social Club) is hitting some kind of mark. Punters have played 600,000 rounds of golf since the Little Bourke Street iteration first opened in March 2017, with 5000 people teeing off every week. The next location to tee off will open at Eastland Shopping Centre in Ringwood this side of 2019, adding to the 18 Holey Moleys across the country.