South Australia

Around half of Australia's wine grows in South Australia, and that shapes the character of the state: people take their time over food, festivals and scenery. A vacation in South Australia combines the relaxed capital, Adelaide, with wine valleys, German settler villages, wild islands and an Outback that is among the driest regions on the continent.

Adelaide: the Festival City

Adelaide was laid out in 1836 according to a carefully conceived plan: a grid of wide streets surrounded by a belt of parks. The center is compact, and North Terrace is lined with the Art Gallery, the South Australian Museum and the State Library. The Central Market is one of the largest covered markets in the Southern Hemisphere. In February and March the city turns into a stage, when the Adelaide Fringe, one of the largest cultural festivals of its kind after Edinburgh, takes place at the same time as the Adelaide Festival and the WOMADelaide music festival. The historic tram takes you to the beach suburb of Glenelg in half an hour, and at Port Adelaide's harbor, museums recall the days of seafaring.

Wine Regions and German Roots

One of the best-known destinations in South Australia is the Barossa Valley northeast of Adelaide. Lutheran immigrants from Silesia and Prussia settled here from the 1840s on, and in Tanunda churches, bakeries and butcher shops selling Mettwurst still bear witness to this today. Barossa Shiraz, often made from vines more than a hundred years old, is among Australia's best-known wines. In the Adelaide Hills you'll find Hahndorf, the oldest surviving German village in Australia, with half-timbered architecture and beer gardens; near Mount Barker, Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir grow. The Clare Valley stands for Riesling, McLaren Vale south of the city for full-bodied reds, and in Coonawarra in the southeast the red terra rossa soil gives Cabernet Sauvignon its color.

South Australia Attractions: Islands and Coast

Kangaroo Island, reached by ferry from Cape Jervis, is Australia's third-largest island and something of an open-air zoo: sea lions at Seal Bay, koalas, kangaroos and the rock formation Remarkable Rocks. The bushfires of 2019/2020 devastated large parts of the island, but nature is recovering. On the Eyre Peninsula, Port Lincoln is the center of the tuna fishing industry and the starting point for cage diving with great white sharks and swimming with sea lions. On the Limestone Coast in the southeast lies Robe, a fishing town with limestone houses and rock lobster, and Mount Gambier with its Blue Lake in an extinct volcanic crater, which turns a deep blue every November.

The Outback

North of Port Augusta on Spencer Gulf, the Outback begins. The Flinders Ranges, with the natural amphitheater of Wilpena Pound, are among the most beautiful mountain landscapes in Australia; in the rock of Ikara-Flinders Ranges National Park, researchers found fossils of the Ediacaran fauna, some of the oldest multicellular organisms on Earth. Opal is mined in Coober Pedy, and because of the heat many residents live in underground homes called dugouts. At Lake Eyre, the country's largest salt lake, the basin fills with water only in rare years.

Food and Drink

South Australia is a region for food lovers. Besides wine, there are oysters from Coffin Bay, King George whiting, tuna from Port Lincoln and cheese from the Adelaide Hills. A local specialty is the pie floater, a meat pie served in pea soup, which you can get from food trucks late in the evening. The cellar doors at the wineries offer tastings, often with a restaurant and a view over the vineyard slopes; many visitors combine this with a picnic of regional products.

Best Time to Visit and Getting There

The best time to visit Adelaide and the coast is October through April, although heat waves of over 104°F (40°C) occur in midsummer. It's better to visit the Outback between April and October. Adelaide Airport (ADL) is only a few miles from the center. Legendary rail journeys begin here: the Ghan goes to Darwin, the Indian Pacific to Perth and Sydney. A rental car is ideal for the wine regions and the coast. If you're heading into the Outback, plan generously for water and fuel, because there are often hundreds of miles without a gas station between settlements, and many dirt roads are closed after rain.