Rimba Irian

Commissioned by PT Freeport, Indonesia’s largest gold and copper mining company, the Rimba Irian golf course opened for play in 1996 for recreational use by the mining company’s employees. The golf course is one of Asia’s most unusual and it’s totally unique. Rimba Irian is routed across a lowland swamp – at one time inhabited by a Melanesian tribe – in the shadow of Indonesia’s highest and most sacred mountain, Puncak Jaya. The ancient rainforest frames the course and the design has incorporated a number of specimen hardwood trees that for some reason were left standing by loggers.

A significant amount of rainfall occurs in this rainforest environment and the course has been built on free-draining shale which copes well with the precipitous conditions by channelling rainwater into the natural streams. A cacophony of tropical birdsong is constant during a round at Rimba Irian.

There are so many excellent holes at Rimba Irian that it is almost impossible to single any out. Perhaps the hole that epitomizes the course is the par five 11th which plays very close to 500 metres from the back tees. The hole curves gently left towards a green that seemingly sits in a jungle clearing.

Bill Coore, “We’re in the pot”

From The Secrets of the Great Golf Course Architects by Michael Patrick Shiels and the ASGCA:

“One of the very few times I worked outside the country was a decidedly memorable experience. In the middle of the 1990s, I travelled to Irian Jaya, to build Club Golf Rimba Irian, a golf course for Freeport MacMoRan, which was an American mining company working on one of the largest gold, silver and copper mines in the world. Irian Jaya, near the equator, was truly one of the most remote, isolated places in the world. Downed World War II-vintage aircraft, which had crashed due to heavy cloud cover, were still being discovered high on the glacier.

The mining company commissioned the course for political reasons. President Suharto, the dictator at the time, loved to play golf, as did many Indonesian government officers. The company had already created a village, with a mosque, church, theater, and schools, for its employees.

Design associate, Rod Whitman and I laughed about it at the time, but we’d been warned that the golf course site was so remote that there were still tribes in the jungle that practiced cannibalism. “I wonder how they cook people?” Whitman joked.

One morning, after breakfast, Whitman and I went out on the site alone. We were clearing centerlines for the fairways when we were startled by four indigenous tribesmen who came out of the bushy growth right in front of us. They weren’t wearing any clothes, but they had bows and arrows, blowguns, and spears. We froze in our tracks.

The tribesmen looked at us. We looked at them. Nobody said a word until Whitman finally uttered, “Oh man… we’re in the pot!” Much to our relief, the tribesmen turned and moved on.”