TO THE casual observer, a South Australian holiday itinerary can look like a wine cellar inventory: Barossa Valley, Clare Valley, Coonawarra, Limestone Coast, McLaren Vale, Fleurieu Peninsula, and the Adelaide Hills. Indeed, it can be an endless round of wine tastings and fine meals with a lot of booty clanking in crates to show for it. South Australia is definitely the nation's fine wine Ground Zero. Even so, there is a lot more than viticulture.
Yet the state known worldwide for its wines is the driest in Australia. The desert begins north of Adelaide and continues into the Northern Territory. Those venturing west will be in the Nullarbor Plain long before the Western Australia border. The inland part of Nullarbor is as featureless as its name - meaning no trees - suggests, but along the coast the plain drops in sheer cliffs to the Great Australian Bight, where right whales and their calves swim in the blue waters.
South Australia has always been more refined than other antipodean colonies. It was created by free settlers, and the capital city of Adelaide was well designed by Colonel William Light so that even today the city centre is surrounded by parklands.
The city's once staid reputation as the "city of churches" now stands at variance with the often avant-garde offerings at the biennial Adelaide Festival of Arts. That is just one of more than 500 events in the "Festival State" in one year. Across South Australia you can choose from offerings as diverse as Wagner's Parsifal, the Barossa Music Festival, the Jacob's Creek Tour Down Under, and the Le Mans Adelaide Race of a Thousand Years.
South Australia's population is less than 1.5m, of whom more than 1m live in Adelaide. That gives the city a strong connection to the bush and the atmosphere of a gateway to the outback, a mood enhanced by the city's fine galleries and museums.
An essential stop is the Australian Aboriginal Cultures Gallery at the Museum of South Australia, which has more than 3,000 items in a contemporary interactive setting - the world's largest Aboriginal cultural display. The Art Gallery of South Australia next door has the world's most comprehensive display of vibrant and engaging Aboriginal art.
You may wish to explore the city's strong links with the very different field of Antarctic exploration. In the Footsteps of Mawson is a new exhibition paying tribute to Sir Douglas Mawson, one of the greats of the Antarctic heroic age. It displays many of his possessions as well as Frank Hurley's incredible footage of the Mawson-led Home of the Blizzard expedition.
For the great wine pursuit, whichever region you choose - the German-influenced Barossa, the rolling hills of McLaren Vale or the terra rossa of Coonawarra - you will find picturesque cellars and enthusiastic winery staff ready to share their knowledge and wines. In the vineyard regions and throughout the state you find South Australia's "little gems", the charming and often quirky B&B accommodation with hosts who will make you feel that you are in a home
away from home.
To encounter the grand scale of Australia, the Stuart Highway leading into the Red Centre takes you to one of the strangest places on earth - or, more accurately, under earth. Cooper Pedy is a frontier town that produces 90% of the world's opals. It is best known as the place where about half the 3,000 population lives underground to avoid the extreme summer heat.
A few gardens mean the town is no longer just a desert landscape of lunar-like craters and dirt piles beside mine shafts. However, it was apocalyptic enough to feature in Mel Gibson's Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. You can fossick for opals but most people visit an underground home, take in the bizarre, dramatic landscape and meet the polyglot people who have come from all over the world to live here.
For a completely different experience, consider the Coorong, a long thin wetland along the southeast coast below the mouth of the Murray River. It is separated from the Great Australian Bight by the line of white sand dunes known as the Younghusband peninsula. The area supports huge populations of waterbirds - pelicans, ducks, swans and waders. They include the endangered hooded plover.
The Murray is Australia's main inland waterway, flowing through South Australia past port towns and groves of river red gums. Its once-thriving paddle-wheeler trade has been revived to carry holidaymakers rather than farm supplies. Today's paddle-wheelers are based in Renmark, Morgan, Mannum and Murray Bridge. Cruises can be an hour or several days. This is not just a link to Australia's past but a wonderful way to observe rustic riverside life.
About 10,000 years ago Kangaroo Island would have been accessible overland. Rising water levels have made it Australia's third largest island. Its isolation has preserved its wildlife because foxes, dingoes and rabbits never crossed the 13km gap separating it from the mainland. Kangaroo Island has also maintained a relaxed island way of life and residents show genuine friendship towards visitors. The waters produce oysters, marron, mussels and abalone that are widely considered the best
in the world.
Even a couple of days on Kangaroo Island are likely to reveal animals in the national parks that may elude you elsewhere in Australia. Koalas, kangaroos, possums and wallabies are plentiful and easily seen. There are also echidnas and platypuses, though their timid natures make them difficult to find. At Seal Bay on the south coast rangers will take you to see the large colony of Australian sealions.
More than 150 years ago German immigrants established settlements in the Adelaide Hills and the Barossa Valley. Wine-lovers all over the world are glad they brought grapevine cuttings and nurtured them into huge vineyards. They also brought their traditions of producing beer, cheese and sausages. From sea to sand, salt lake to pasture, South Australia is a multi-faceted destination, even showing some of the rough edges of a true ecological experience. Those who appreciate the finer things in
life will find that South Australian dining and drinking reveal the heritage of those early settlers.
David McGonigal
Sunday Times
