A taste of South Australia

Having finished the golfing activities, we headed down the Eyre Peninsula exploring some of the South Australian coastline along the way. I would love to return at some stage with more time, as there were plenty of places worthy of further exploration and better light for photography. The granite inselbergs at Murphy’s Haystacks, for example, really need some Golden Hour light to do them justice.

Basing ourselves in Port Lincoln for a couple of nights, we enjoyed a lovely day exploring Coffin Bay National Park, and sampling some of the local seafood.

A visit to South Australia has to include some wineries – a long drive north to Port Augusta and then south again found us in the Clare Valley, one of the premium wine regions of Australia. By this time, the heat wave we left behind in Perth had caught up – temperatures around 40 deg C tend to slow activity down – but we did manage to visit a few estates. We then relaxed a bit in Hahndorf, an attractive town in the Adelaide Hills with a very strong German influence (yummy beer and sausages).

Plans for the next stage had to be abandoned due to the extreme temperatures (all the national parks in South Australia, northern Victoria and western New South Wales were closed) so we decided to head for the Snowy Mountains as quickly as possible – at least we had air-con in the vehicles during the day. South Australia is definitely on the ‘revisit’ list.