As it turns out, the South Australian embarked on a gruelling 39-hour journey to make sure he made it to Port Moresby for the PNG Open, and his reason why shows how much this event means to him.

“You don’t know how many times you’re going to be able to try and defend a title,” said Barker after the Wednesday Pro-Am at Royal Port Moresby ahead of the Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia’s season opener.

“This was my first pro win, so I have to come back and defend it.”

Barker’s win at last year’s PNG Open got his second season on the Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia off to the perfect start, and he was able to carry that momentum throughout, finishing tenth on the Order of Merit standings.

While many may shudder at the thought of playing in England and Papua New Guinea in consecutive weeks, Barker admits he didn’t think twice about making the trip.

“I’m all for having four, five, six weeks in a row, and practising that, because that’s one of the arts of pro golf,” he said.

“Yes you’ve got to be a good golfer, but there’s a lot of those other parts to it that a lot of people don’t understand.

“You’ve got to travel halfway across the world four times in a row and get up and be ready to go. This week was another good chance to practise that.”

Barker admits the course is playing quite different this week than it was last year, with the change to the schedule meaning that Royal Port Moresby is significantly drier.

“We were here in May last year, and it was lot greener and a lot more grass around, so then driving was paramount. To win you had to drive it well,” he explained.

“Because if you hit it in the trees you had to chip out, you were in this thick cow grass.

“But now it’s a lot drier, so I hit it in the trees a couple of times today and was able to get a lot of spin on the ball, hooks and cuts to get it back into play.

“Normally if you keep it in play and putt well, you’re always going to be up near the top, but I’m not too sure what to expect and I think it’ll be different to last time.”

A winner by four-shots last year, Barker recalls a special moment that he hopes to replicate on Sunday.

“Knowing that I’d won on the 18th green was pretty special,” he said.

“I was standing there and I looked over at Liam Georgiadis who was standing off to the side of the green and sort of gave him the ‘how are we looking?’, and he just nodded his head.

“I noticed I was looking down, in my own internal thoughts, so I just lifted my head up and thought ‘Yep, this is pretty cool’.”