The capital city of South Australia, and the state’s overwhelmingly largest city, is Adelaide.  The name was given to the city in 1836 after the wife of King William IV at his request.  Whatever, it’s definitely the big smoke in this vast area of Australia and after enjoying Kangaroo Island for a few days our plan was to head into the city.

But of course we didn’t take the most direct path.  After coming off the ferry we camped back at Trig Campground in beautiful Deep Creek National Park and the next day followed the rough and steep four wheel drive track down to remote Blowhole Beach.  Wanda definitely had her early morning workout and we didn’t find the blowhole but we loved exploring another part of this wonderful national park.

We followed the coast eastward to the major regional centre of Victor Harbor, not Harbour as Australians would usually spell it but Harbor.  But no matter how you spell it, this town is very cool.  Victor Harbor has about 17,000 people, a nice size by our books, and has a historic wharf and jetty area where bales of wool and other products were loaded on ships after goods for the local communities were offloaded. 

Just off shore is Granite Island, a low-lying bump rising from the water, and is connected to the town via a long causeway.  On summer weekends horses pull drays filled with visitors back and forth to the island but we walked across and did the 1.5 kilometre (one mile) loop trail around the island.  Great stuff.

More Kodak Moments from our walk around Granite Island…

Having decided that Victor Harbor would be where we would want to live if we were moving to South Australia, which we are not, we moved on and camped for the night amongst the vineyards at Langhorne Creek.  Normally we would find a spot closer to the coast with water views but the cold winds that have followed us for the last couple of weeks have pushed us inland where we are more protected.  I know, wimps.

The next day we pointed Wanda towards Glenelg, the super-popular beach close to Adelaide.  Along the way we did a short bush walk in Onkaparinga River National Park just because we couldn’t resist.  After lunch at the beach we headed into Adelaide for a look around this beautiful city, so invitingly liveable with its old sandstone buildings, picturesque parks and fabulous entertainment and sporting facilities.  For a city of 1.3 million Adelaide retains a strong not-that-big feeling.

We then headed to our good friends Rick and Suzanne for a wonderful night of reminiscing and catching up at their comfy suburban home.  I worked with Rick in London back in the early 1980’s and we’ve kept in touch over the years, always catching up whenever we’re in the same city.  Within seconds the four of us get right back in the groove together like we’ve never been away and told stories from the past as well as compared notes on grandchildren.  As you do!

But, as always, we keep a very flexible mind when we travel.  When we found out there was a granddaughter’s birthday party coming up in a few days we decided that was the most important thing in the world.  The problem was that it was 1,200 kilometres away and we had only three days to get there!

Not a problem, we hitched a ride on the Mallee Highway heading out of Adelaide and headed east across the vast fields of grain, passing through towns like Murray Bridge and Tailem Bend, both on the mighty Murray River, and then following a rail line with imposing grain silos in every little town. 

Eventually we crossed into Victoria and after passing more silos and the town of Ouyen we found a bush reserve nearby and called it quits for the day. 

But these vast flat lands, which hard working farmers over the generations have converted from dry mallee scrub to productive cropland, go unnoticed and unknown to most city-based dwellers. As we continued eastward, crossing the Murray River again and passing into New South Wales, the open plains of grain continued with beautiful predictability and consistency. 

Driving through the countryside also treats us with more wonderful mailboxes…

The key in this Murray River region is access to the water, there’s no doubt, but we know this land is vulnerable to changing weather patterns and we could tell as we passed through a long string of small farming communities that prosperity was illusive.  But we admired these people, their commitment to the land and their industrious nature.  Impressive.

In the very attractive and liveable town of Deniliquin, population 8,000 – the biggest we had seen since leaving Adelaide – we had lunch and picked up some supplies.  And Julie spoke those scary words she has said in other places we’ve visited – “I could live here”.

We ended the very long driving day, all worth it for the upcoming birthday party, after passing through more endless fields of grain before camping for the night on the banks of Billabong Creek in the tiny farming community of Walbundrie.  It had been a big effort but the beautiful farming countryside and the end goal of a Halloween birthday party had made it all a breeze.

From Walbundrie we continued eastward, stopping at the amazing Morgan Lookout for absolutely fabulous views over this rich farming and grazing land.  As we moved east the flat plains gave way to green rolling hills, less farming and more grazing of sheep and cattle. 

We stopped at the tidy town of Holbrook, affectionally known as The Submarine Town, even though it is a long way from the coast, because it was named after a WWI submarine hero and now sports the shell of HMAS Otway, a submarine that was decommissioned in 1994.  That’s cool.

We cruised in for lunch at Tumbarumba, a cute town in green rolling hills with a very cool name.  In fact, if I was choosing a place to live solely on it’s name I would move to Tumbarumba.  We then climbed up into the Snowy Mountains, past Mt. Selwyn ski fields, through Adaminaby and finally into Cooma where our eight year old birthday part was happening. 

We began this six week trip to explore South Australia with a wedding and we ended it with a birthday party, perfect bookends to a fabulous trip through perhaps the most underrated state to explore in Australia.  Whether it was the deserts, the lakes, the peninsulas or the islands we fell in love with South Australia and promised ourselves to come back and explore new places sometime soon.