Over lunch in Adelaide, a sentence is uttered that sticks with me: “Australia is a continent that pretends to be a country.” Its meaning only becomes clear later, somewhere amongst echidnas, Gondwana rocks, the vast expanses of the outback and two salt lakes that are impossible to take in from the air.
A grandfather chases his grandson around two polished stainless-steel spheres, stacked on top of one another, four metres high. Both are laughing; both are reflected, distorted, in the steel. Bert Flugelman designed the spheres in 1977 specifically for this spot in Rundle Mall, and that was exactly what he wanted: for people to touch them, for children to splash on them, for them to become part of the hustle and bustle of the mall. ‘Meet me at the balls’ has been this city’s standard meeting phrase for almost fifty years.
Wide avenues, jacaranda-blue front gardens, church spires of honey-coloured sandstone: Adelaide was once known as the City of Churches. It is the only major city in the world to be completely encircled by a green belt of parkland - a green corset mandated by the city’s founder, Colonel William Light, in his 1836 masterplan.
In the Art Gallery of South Australia, The Thinker immediately catches the eye - one of over twenty Rodin bronzes. What is even more remarkable is what the curators do with it: Rodin stands alongside contemporary Aboriginal art, whilst colonial portraits hang above Asian ceramics. Here, the aim is not simply to exhibit; here, the aim is to provoke.
Duncan Fraser from the Adelaide Tourism Office had mentioned another phrase to me earlier that afternoon, rather in passing. “Australia is a continent that pretends to be a country.” I jot it down because it sounds funny, a bit offbeat somehow. It will stay with my wife Annette and me throughout the whole trip.
Early in the morning, there’s still dew on the paths in the Botanic Gardens. An Australian white ibis glides silently across the pond; in the reeds, a moorhen waddles about, its red forehead patch gleaming as if freshly painted. A Queensland umbrella tree spreads its pinnate leaves, each as wide as an outstretched arm.
In the afternoon, our guide Katina Vangopoulos leads us through the streets. On Vardon Avenue, Ophelia sleeps on a house wall, her eyes closed, her hair bobbing in the water, surrounded by water lilies. Street artist Jimmy C took three days and thousands of layered spray-paint dots to immortalise Shakespeare’s tragic heroine here on brick.
In the evening, in a bar on Leigh Street, Adelaide passes us by once more. But the land behind it - the unformed, vast, wild land - has yet to speak a word. Tomorrow we’re taking the ferry to Kangaroo Island. There, a different Australia begins.
Just under an hour’s crossing from Cape Jervis, then the ferry spits out dozens of cars, our hire car right in the middle of them. What follows are sheep on lush green pastures, wind-sculpted eucalyptus trees, the shimmering sea beyond, and a silence you can almost hear. Kangaroo Island covers just under 4,400 square kilometres; it is Australia’s third-largest island and something of a parallel universe.
Matthew Flinders named the island in 1802 after the kangaroos that his starving crew hunted. Six weeks later, he encountered the Frenchman Nicolas Baudin on the open sea, who was also seeking to chart the same coastline. Neither knew of the other’s existence. To this day, the place names are half English, half French: Cape du Couedic, Vivonne Bay, Admirals Arch.
Adam Houchin is waiting outside our accommodation the next morning. The former lorry driver and football coach is our guide today. “No traffic lights on the island, no roundabouts,” he says. “No foxes, rabbits, dingoes or toads.” A brief pause. “That might sound like a minor detail, but it isn’t.” He’s right. The introduced predators that have ravaged the ecosystem on the mainland are absent here. A stroke of geographical luck: when sea levels rose after the last Ice Age, an intact piece of land was cut off along with the island.
Suddenly, Adam brakes hard. “An echidna! There, in the bush!” The hedgehog-like animal burrows through dry leaves; its creamy-yellow spines - modified hairs up to seven centimetres long - glisten in the sun. It waddles stiffly and reptilian-like, a creature as if from another planet. Anteaters are monotremes, mammals that lay eggs. It has no teeth, but a sticky tongue, and a body temperature of just 31 to 32 degrees, significantly lower than that of all other mammals.
At the roadside stands a plant that, at first glance, could be a palm tree. A grass tree. Some specimens are 300 years old, says Adam, and grow barely a centimetre a year. When the flower spike emerges, however, it grows a centimetre a day and reaches a height of six metres. “The plant actually needs fire to flower. It’s its starting signal,” says Adam. The old leaves, which hang around the trunk like a skirt, reveal how long ago the last fire took place.
In a clump of eucalyptus trees, a koala hangs asleep in the fork of a branch. Then he blinks. In 1926, eighteen animals were released onto the island; the population subsequently exploded to over 65,000.
In the summer of 2019/2020, the fires came and burnt down almost half the island: 211,000 hectares, 87 houses, 60,000 farm animals, two human lives. Flinders Chase National Park was 96 per cent destroyed; around 39,000 koalas - 82 per cent of the island’s population - perished in the flames. The population has since recovered to over 15,000 animals. Around a third of the island’s area is protected; Flinders Chase National Park, which was hit hardest, is included in this.
In the afternoon, the Remarkable Rocks. Granite boulders, some as big as a house, towering sixty metres above the Southern Ocean. For 500 million years, wind, salt and rain have worked on them, carving them out of the primordial rock of Gondwana. The result is shapes that no sculptor could ever have imagined. Black xenoliths are embedded in the light-coloured granite, whilst orange lichen covers the surfaces. Some of the rocks have hollows you can crawl through. Annette stands in one of these hollows, the wind blowing her hair out of her face.
Final stop: Seal Bay. Three Australian sea lions, around five months old, roll down a dune, gnawing at each other’s fur, cuddling, romping about and sniffing, whilst their mothers lie some distance away, feigning disinterest. The species is threatened with extinction: there are still around 12,000 of these sea lions worldwide, with about 800 living here. Adult males dive to depths of up to 275 metres and can hold their breath for twelve minutes.
On the drive back, we’re bathed in the evening light, which bathes everything in honey-coloured hues. Kangaroos stand by the roadside; black swans lead their cygnets through the reeds. And Duncan’s remark already sounds different. Here, on an island without foxes or hares, but with echidnas, prehistoric rocks and a storm-lashed sea, evolution is playing a mind-boggling game within a small space. For 500 million years.
McLaren Vale, hills like gentle waves, vines in autumnal reds and golds, with slender Goldcrest cypresses swaying in the wind. Back on the mainland, the route leads to an estate dating from 1851, with light-coloured sandstone and climbing plants covering the façade, and just under 3,000 square metres of organic garden behind the restaurant. The sommelier serves two full glasses of white wine from a local producer in the valley. What’s served at the table is grown just a few metres away. Nature dictates the menu.
Two days and 192 kilometres later, the Clare Valley. Warrick Duthy of the Watervale Hotel runs his Chef’s Table here: ten guests at a long counter, right next to the open kitchen. The valley, he says, is geologically more diverse than almost any other wine region in Australia, and that is precisely what explains the global reputation of the local Riesling.
After the fifth course, Warrick’s tone changes. “The Ngadjuri came here to the valley every October and November. They called themselves the ‘Keepers of the Breath’. The valley was full of water, the climate was good. They came here to give birth. They did not see themselves as owners of the land; they were its guardians.” After the final dish, his words linger over the table for a long time.
The next morning, the Jesuit settlement of Sevenhill. In 1848, an Austrian priest came to this valley to minister to German-speaking Catholics who felt out of place amongst the Lutheran Prussians in Tanunda. Aloysius Kranewitter named the settlement after the seven hills of Rome.
There is a quiet bustle around the church. A flute-crowing starling sits in profile on a fence post. In the garden, a bird - which I identify as a musk lorikeet - drinks nectar from flowering hollyhocks. On a rotten eucalyptus branch, a red-lapped sunbird is chattering away; a fan-tailed pigeon peers over from the fence, its crest pricked up. And then, amongst the lichen-covered branches, a yellow-and-blue pennant parakeet, so brightly coloured that for a moment I think someone has hung it there as a decoration.
Out in the vineyard, I think of the Ngadjuri, who did not own the valley but tended it. South Australia is a land that one cannot truly own.
The evening begins with emus. Twelve of them roam the ochre-brown grasslands east of Hawker. From the viewpoint, the layered rock of the Flinders Ranges undulates in waves towards the horizon, as if a mighty hand had pushed the continent together. In the silence, I think of the word ‘Dadirri’ from a language of the Australian North: deep, inner listening. Perhaps that is why I don’t feel like talking much right now.
At six o’clock the next morning, pilot Aidan Fry takes off in the Cessna 210N. Wilpena Pound comes into view first. From below, it looks like a mountain range; from above, the truth is revealed: a natural amphitheatre covering 80 square kilometres. Purple-grey folds run through the rock, as if tectonic pressure had gathered the Earth’s crust like fabric.
A little later, we reach Anna Creek Station, the world’s largest cattle station at 23,677 square kilometres. Aidan points downwards. “He’s somewhere down there.” I can’t see anything. Then a faint line, a second one, and suddenly he emerges: the Marree Man, a figure 2.7 kilometres long, discovered in 1998 by a bush pilot on a routine flight. Who created it remains a mystery to this day. Nobody saw it, nobody said a word.
Shortly afterwards, Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre lies beneath us like a shard of broken mirror, catching and scattering the light. On the shore, rust-brown water meets salt-encrusted earth; it glows carmine-red where minerals and algae form patterns. When full, it is the continent’s largest lake and has only been truly full four times in the past century, most recently in 1974.
For lunch we end up in William Creek, officially a town: six to ten inhabitants, depending on the season. We eat with cattle farmers, motorbike travellers and mine workers.
The return flight takes us over Lake Torrens, which has been almost dry for decades. Salt crusts sweep across the lake bed like frozen waves, interspersed with rust-red islands of oxidised sediment; from the air, it looks like a geological X-ray of the continent. I press my forehead against the window. Now, after echidnas and sea lions, after Duncan’s remark about Australia - continent or country - after Gondwana rocks in the whistling wind and two salt lakes as incomprehensible as they are beautiful, that remark simply drifts away. What remains is wonder, humility and gratitude.
White sandstone churches, an island without foxes and a salt lake that rarely holds water: South Australia saves its best stories for those who venture further afield. On the official South Australia website, you’ll find itineraries for hire car trips from Adelaide into the outback, dates for the wine regions, tips on the ferry to Kangaroo Island and scenic flights over the Flinders Ranges. Plan your own tour of the south now.
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