South Australia is a state of sharp contrasts: Mediterranean wine country, arid outback, a long and largely empty coastline, and Adelaide — a planned colonial city that has become Australia's festival and food capital.
Adelaide is the starting point for most visits. It's a compact, walkable city with good restaurants, excellent wine bars, and the Adelaide Central Market (one of Australia's best). The Adelaide Festival (annual, March) and the Adelaide Fringe (the world's second-largest fringe festival after Edinburgh) make March the liveliest time to visit. The city sits at the foot of the Adelaide Hills — a green, cool escape with charming small towns, wineries, and wildlife parks including Cleland, where you can hand-feed kangaroos.
The Barossa Valley, an hour north of Adelaide, is one of Australia's most famous wine regions. The Shiraz here — grown from vines brought to the valley by German settlers in the 1840s — is among the best in the country. Cellar doors are open most days; the valley is easily explored by car.
McLaren Vale, half an hour south, is a smaller, more intimate wine region with ocean views. The Fleurieu Peninsula beyond it has the Victor Harbor beach resort and Kangaroo Island ferry access.
Kangaroo Island — two hours south of Adelaide including the 45-minute ferry from Cape Jervis — is one of the best places in Australia to see wildlife in the wild. Sea lions haul out on the beaches of Seal Bay; koalas sleep in the roadside gums; Cape Barren geese wander the farmland. The island suffered severe fire damage in the 2019-20 season but has largely recovered.
The Flinders Ranges, five hours north of Adelaide, offer outback scenery without the extreme remoteness of the Northern Territory. Wilpena Pound — a natural amphitheatre of quartzite ridges — is the centrepiece, with excellent bushwalking and Aboriginal rock art sites.
Beyond the Flinders, the landscape becomes serious outback. Coober Pedy, 850 km north of Adelaide, is the world's opal mining capital and a genuinely bizarre town — a significant portion of the population lives underground to escape the heat. The underground churches and dugout homes are worth seeing.
The Coorong, a 200-km lagoon system south of Adelaide, is a critical waterbird habitat and the setting for Colin Thiele's Storm Boy. Pelicans and migratory waders congregate here in large numbers.
