Port Pirie, South Australia

Grain silos and McDonalds

Most of the informatiion I found about Port Pirie was negative, mainly because it has a lead smelter now owned by Nyrstar. In fact there has been a lead smelter here since the 1880's.

There were grave concerns in recent years regarding high lead levels found in the blood of the people in the town, particularly young children. The Government Health Department intervened and as a result, the number of children under five with lead levels over 10 microgram per decilitre (a national goal) is at its lowest since recording was started.

The Health Department said that the people of Port Pirie, the local council and Nyrstar are to be congratulated on this positive achievement.

The Barossa, South Australia

A personal favourite

Vineyards in the background

The Wine Clinic

Autumn in the Vineyard

The Barossa is the wine capital of Australia. In 2008 The Barossa was listed as one of the world's top 10 wine destinations by TripAdvisor, an interesting travel site I've just discovered. It seems that 15,000,000 travellers from 190 countries planned trips using this site this week.

The Barossa and Eden Valley are home to some of the oldest Shiraz vineyards in the world and there are also fabulous Rieslings and iconic wine names. No other wine region in Australia can match the European heritage of the Barossa. There are over 100 accommodation options and tours operate daily.

Penfolds Grange is reported to be the best wine produced in Australia. Bin 4 Chiraz 1952 vintage, signed by Max Schubert, is available from the Penfolds Red Wine Clinic for $12,500.00 per bottle. Penfolds call their clinics 'The ultimate in after sales service'. The clinics provide owners of Penfolds wines 15 years or older, the opportunity to have their wines assessed by a Penfolds winemaker.

So what is it about Grange that's so special? This is what the people who make it say:

"The first thing to consider is reputation, based on track record. Grange has been produced every year since 1951. Good bottles from the 1950s and 60s are still marvellous drinking. It is accepted that Grange does not even begin giving its best until 12-15 years from vintage. Grange has been regarded as Australia's finest wine, without rival, for at least 30 years."


The Barossa is for people who appreciate good food and fine wine and have the means to enjoy it.

Hahndorf, South Australia

The Cedars

The Studio


Main Street

Old Buildings

Droving Into The Light

Twenty five kilometres from Adelaide city is the quaint little town of Hahndorf and one of our greatest artists, Sir Hans Heysen, came from there.

He was seven years old when his father brought the family out from Germany in the 1880's. Things were tough and jobs were hard to come by and his father had to move around a lot to get work which meant that young Hans had to change schools many times. He showed a keen interest in art at an early age and loved the countryside around Hahndorf, where many other German families had settled.

When he was sixteen he went to Art School in his spare time because he had a full time job working for his father delivering farm produce. In 1897 Robert Barr Smith paid for one years tuition at the School of Design and he sold his first painting two years later.

But his big break came in 1899 when a number of business people in Adelaide paid for him to study in Paris on one condition - that everything he painted would belong to them. They gave him an allowance of four hundred pounds a year and off he went to Europe.

When he came home in 1903 he was twenty six and broke, all the money he made had gone to his sponsors. But he found a studio in Adelaide and started to paint full time and gave art classes to help with finances. Then in 1904 he married a German girl and that same year, he won his first major art prize.

In 1908 he moved his family to a rented house in Hahndorf and set about painting his great passion - the Australian bush. As his success grew, in 1912 he was able to buy The Cedars in Hahndorf and it was here he built his studio and painted most of his famous paintings.

During the first world war 1914-1918, regardless of the fact that he was a naturalised Australian, his German background caused a lot of bad feeling. The big art dealers in Sydney and Melbourne black listed him because they weren't sure where his loyalty lay so they refused to show any of his work. But when the war ended, life returned to normal.

Hans died in 1968 and his daughter Nora, the first woman to win the Archibald Prize, is the only one of his eight children to inherit his artistic genius.

Adelaide, South Australia

View of the city from Mount Osmond

Fountain in Victoria Square

Post Office

Victoria Square

Victoria Square is in the heart of Adelaide and forms the centre of the city's grid of one square mile.

Adelaide is the capital city of South Australia with a population of 1.2 million. Unlike Sydney and Melbourne, it didn't just evolve, it was planned. There is some confusion over who was responsible for the original design. Colonel William Light, the first Surveyor General of South Australia took all the glory but George Strickland Kingston is now considered to be the true designer with his grid layout, made up of wide streets, open public squares and completely surrounded with parkland.

Regardless of who was originally responsible for the design, Adelaide is a beautiful city and continues to be included in the Top 10 of the Economist's World's Most Livable Cities index.

Victor Harbor, South Australia

View from The Bluff

Looking back to Victor Harbor

Granite Island boardwalk

Granite Island

Take a tram ride

You can take a slow and leisurely ride across to Granite Island in the tram pulled along by a gentle Clydesdale or you can walk across. The Island is famous for its colony of Little Penguins and there are guided tours one hour before dark. A walk around the island is approximately 3 kilometres and will take about 40 minutes.

Kingston, South Australia

The Big Lobster

Kingston Jetty



Lighthouse, circa 1872

Kingston is lobster country and is the home of the Big Lobster. Not far from here the Maria, built in Dublin in 1823 foundered - she left Port Adelaide for Hobart on 26th June 1840 and went down somewhere near Coorong. Amazingly, all 26 passengers on board, including women and children, somehow made it safely to shore and headed for Adelaide on foot, 180 kilometres away.

Without the help of the Aboriginal Ngarrindjeri people, they would have surely perished. They agreed to help them cross the land and provided food, water and shelter.

Two years earlier, another ship the Fanny was also wrecked in the same area and the survivors had also been helped to safety by the Ngarrindjeri. In fact the Captain of the ship praised their rescuers highly and said.

"...during our stay amongst them , which was about seven weeks, they at all times evinced the greatest of friendship."

But something went horribly wrong. Word was sent to Adelaide that the entire party had been murdered by the natives and a Mr Pullen was sent to investigate. When they made contact with the tribe, they took him to a place where all the bodies lay, including those of the women and children and he were appalled.

But there was another side to the story. The Ngarrindgeri said that members of the party had continually made sexual advances to young Ngarrindgeri women which was strictly forbidden and after many warnings, they killed all the survivors.

Governor Gawler went beserk and sent Pullen and a Major O'Halloran, 12 police, 11 sailors and 3 Aborigines to capture those responsible. O'Halloran took 65 prisoners on August 22nd 1840 and in a kangaroo court, sentenced two men to death. A gallows was swiftly constructed and they were hanged.

That's when the debate started. The Governor was eventually recalled to England because it was decided that he had contravened British justice by not giving to two prisoners a proper trial.

The wreck of the Maria has never been found.

Mount Gambia, South Australia

The Umpherston Sinkhole

A fascinating place

Sandstone and dolomite architecture

Beautiful buildings in the city

Port MacDonnell




Cave Garden



Blue Lake

Not turquoise but still blue today

It's hard to imagine that 30 million years ago Mount Gambier was covered by a warm shallow ocean. The remains of the sea creatures accumulated in a pile on the sea floor and over time turned into limestone.

The Umpherston Sinkhole garden is a fascinating place and in the centre of the town is the Cave Garden. I immediately fell in love with the beautiful heritage and private homes made of limestone and dolomite. The dolomite is a very attractive light shade of pink and is still used in buildings today but I believe it's very expensive and I can understand why.

The Blue Lake is a volcano which erupted about 5000 years ago and is the town's water supply. It has a 5 kilometer circumference and is 30 metres deep. The lake changes colour during the year - between November to March it turns a beautiful turquoise blue, but not today.

Port MacDonnell is a short drive away and well worth a look. They have an extensive lobster fishing fleet and the local fish shop was selling 2 kilo lobsters for $35 a kilo, the cheapest we have seen so far.