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Adelaide
Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, has shaken
off its deeply conservative past to become a lively city -
yet one that has managed to maintain a sense of restraint
and elegance. It is laid out on a grid, interspersed with
spacious squares and surrounded by rolling hills, parkland
and coastline. Known as the Festival State, Adelaide encourages
a thriving cultural environment for performing arts, culminating
in the Adelaide Festival of the Arts and Adelaide
Fringe, held in February/March of even-numbered years.
Sleek modern towers rise over gracious Edwardian and Victorian
architecture, which houses funky boutiques, music stores,
cafes and restaurants serving up cuisine from every corner
of the world. This culinary variety is due in a large part
to Adelaide's incredible multiculturalism, celebrated in the
fascinating Migration Museum. A number of other museums,
cultural centres and art galleries can also be found here,
especially on North Terrace, which leads into the vast
Botanical Gardens and runs parallel to Rundle Street,
a cosmopolitan boulevard of alfresco dining, flash bars and
clubs and a buzzing café society.
If you can't even manage the pace of this leisurely city,
the serene Adelaide Hills are less than half an hour's
drive away, featuring massive gum trees and varied bushwalking.
Alternatively, there are a number of beachside suburbs, including
Glenelg, which can be reached directly from the city
centre by vintage tram. The line runs along Jetty Road
- a lively and colourful strip of pubs, bars, cafes and restaurants
- to the famously white sandy beach, where fishing, jet-skiing
and scuba diving are all available.
Barossa Valley
The Barossa Valley is a prime destination for lovers of the
good life. Food, music and, above all, wine are the drawcards
here - the area produces about 25% of Australia's total wine
output and boasts around 50 wineries. Tours of these often
have an historical focus, but there's plenty of opportunity
to sniff, swirl and savour the product. Settled in the mid
1800s by Prussian and Silesian immigrants, the Barossa has
retained a distinctly Germanic flavour, reflected in the Lutheran
churches dotted through the valley and the oom-pa-pa of its
many big brass bands. All the area's attractions combine in
the April of every second year for the Barossa Vintage
Festival - it's all about guzzling wine and scoffing fine
food, including mouth-watering Bavarian bakery delights and
varieties of wurst (sausage), while music rolls through the
surrounding hills. Jazz and classical music also provide the
context for the Barossa International Music Festival every
October - another stylish and upmarket two-week-long feast.
Flinders Ranges
The Flinders Ranges run north for 250 miles through
South Australia. While the mountains don't rise to any particularly
great heights, the views from the peaks are spectacular and
the scenery often dramatic, comprising deep gorges, steep
bluffs, carpets of wildflowers, desolate salt lakes and majestic
river red gums. The area is home to kangaroos and yellow-footed
rock wallabies and hosts an abundance of birdlife including
emus and wedge-tailed eagles, as well as corellas, rosellas
and budgerigars exploding into screeching blossoms of colour
against the wide sky. The energetic visitor can tackle any
of the many walking, cycling and bushland tracks, including
parts of the 800 mile Heysen trail, but the area can
also be explored by scenic steam engine, horse or camel. As
well as the many natural attractions, there are ghost towns
and ruins to visit and Aboriginal rock art galleries
to admire.
Coober Pedy
The extreme and inhospitable climate of the South Australian
outback drives inhabitants underground - literally. Coober
Pedy is an opal mining town where almost all of the dwellings
exist below ground, providing respite from temperatures that
practically soar off the thermometer in the summer and plummet
to below freezing in the winter. On the surface, the desolate
badlands-style surroundings are evocative of outer-space landscapes,
but beneath the lunar strangeness there are subterranean churches,
restaurants, hotels and thousands of mine shafts. Visitors
can try their hand at fossicking for opals, but if
you don't strike it lucky, these attractive gems can be purchased
from one of the town's many opal traders or jewellers.
Kangaroo Island
These days, the rugged, wave-beaten coast of unspoiled Kangaroo
Island provides great surf but in the distant past has
also caused around 60 shipwrecks. These have created superb
dive sites where an abundance and variety of marine life,
plus drop-offs and reefs can also be discovered. Secluded
beaches for basking and swimming can be found here, but if
getting into the water doesn't appeal, there are countless
fishing options, yielding plentiful catches. Wildlife on the
island includes everything that is unique to Australia - kangaroos,
wallabies, koalas, echidnas and platypus - and colonies of
penguins, sea lions and seals can also be observed at close
range. On the coastline, the Remarkable Rocks, sculpted
into unusual formations by years of weathering, form a dramatic
landmark, while inland, the island features bushland, eucalyptus
and colourful blazes of wildflowers. |
