5 minute read
South Australia … My Home
Destination
Australia, South Australia
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By Roderick Eime
Pennington Bay, Kangaroo Island ©Isaac Forman, Serio
"South Australia I was born, heave away, haul away …”
It was one of the few songs I enjoyed singing at primary school. I could identify with it. I recognised the history. It felt like my song and I could remember the words.
Even though South Australia was established by free settlers and colonial entrepreneurs as opposed to convicts, it was still a tough gig. It took a while to work out the best places to grow stuff - like wheat, barley and wine grapes - and it wasn’t until a chap named Goyder was able to work out that most of the state was too dry and unpredictable for much at all. If fact, South Australia is actually the driest state on the driest continent. But hey, it’s home.
“With a bottle of whiskey in my hand We're bound for South Australia”
After a long cruise from Prussia in the 1840s, my dad’s family settled in the Barossa Valley at a place called Concordia and started farming. Okay, you won’t see our name on any of the famous labels like Penfolds, Jacob’s Creek, Wolf Blass, Henschke or St Hallett, although mum did type Max Schubert’s first Grange labels when she worked in the typing pool at the Magill winery in the ‘50s.
Today, the warm summer sun continues to bathe the verdant dales of the Barossa Valley much as the Englishman, George Fife Angus and the first Silesian Lutheran emigrants would have found it back then. The sandy loams and red clay terroir that characterise the broad Barossa region were quickly identified as an ideal soil for growing vines and varieties were promptly brought from Europe.
For many years the Barossa Valley winemakers were in a state of stagnation, producing mainly fortified wines. Then, from the mid- to late-20th century, skilled vintners like Penfold’s Schubert began developing exquisite table wines to
cater to the evolving tastes of the global wine market. The Barossa Valley is now one of Australia's quintessential wine regions and a jewel in South Australia’s tourism crown.
A visit to the Barossa today is a true gourmet experience, with visitors strolling the historic streets of Tanunda, Nuriootpa and Angaston for such delights as Maggie Beer’s Farm Shop where lunch is a must - if you can get a table. Try one of the long-time favourites like Vintners, 1918 Bistro & Grill or Salter’s Kitchen, while wine bar options include Wanera and Vino Lokal, the home of Artisans of the Barossa.
We all know South Australia has made a big deal of wine tourism. Actually, a really big deal. In fact, it is no exaggeration to call SA the ‘wine state’. With 44% of the nation’s vineyards, it is responsible for around half of the nation’s annual wine output. And it seems every time we pull a cork, there’s a new one popping up to join the established ones like McLaren Vale, Coonawarra and the Riverland.
The Adelaide Hills, once known for apples and strawberries is now resplendent in Pinot Gris and Riesling vineyards while the sparse expanses of the Eyre Peninsula now boast rich shiraz, cabernet sauvignon and merlot that have gained the attention of even James Halliday.
By virtue of its isolation and efficient quarantining, the black death of the wine industry, Phylloxera, failed to take root in South Australia, making the vineyards of the Barossa and surrounds possibly the oldest living vines in the world.
When Matthew Flinders sighted the landmass he would call Kangaroo Island (KI) in 1802, we can be pretty sure he wasn’t scouting for somewhere to plant grapes. It was roughneck sealers and whalers who first exploited the waters around Backstairs Passage (the often rough, 13km body of water separating KI from the mainland), pushing the colonies of delightful sea lions to the Murray River Cruising ©South Australia Tourism Commission
St Hugo, Barossa ©John Montesi
Maggie Beer's Farm Shop, Barossa ©Sven Kovac
Admiral's Arch, Kangaroo Island ©South Australia Tourism Commission
Barrister's Block, Adelaide Hills ©Ryan Cantwell
Vino Lokal, Barossa ©John Kruger
Seppeltsfield Winery, Barossa ©South Australia Tourism Commission ©Penfold's Magill Estate
brink of extinction - a predicament they are still struggling to recover from 200 years later.
This year’s bushfires wreaked havoc on the island, torching vast swathes of bushland and national park. The island took a big hit, but is recovering strongly. The shiraz, cabernet sauvignon, malbec, pinot noir and pinot gris grapes produce a distinct flavour that separates the island’s wines from mainland varietals. And if KI needed a ringing endorsement, it was Frenchman Jacques Lurton, a member of the largest winemaking family in the world, who fell in love with KI on his honeymoon in 1997 and chose it as the site for his big wine adventure, Islander Estate Vineyards.
Exploring the wine regions in search of the perfect grape is all the excuse anyone needs to make a complete holiday of the experience. You can even combine the country’s most famous river cruise experience with an opportunity to sample some of the more remote wineries that line the iconic Murray River, the country’s largest river by volume that extends deep into Victoria and New South Wales, forming the border between the two most populous states.
The imperious Murray Princess is the largest sternwheeler in the Southern Hemisphere and ventures as far as Waikerie and Renmark from its base at historic Mannum, once a hub for the then-thriving paddle steamer industry that opened up the country’s fledgling agricultural endeavours, including wine.
The 4- and 7-night cruises include a visit to the Burk Salter Boutique Winery Cellar Door at Blanchetown, a location etched in my own memory from childhood visits to my grandparents holiday shack back when Blanchetown was a dusty outpost with a river crossing served by a simple vehicular ferry.
My cute nostalgic musings are but a pimple on the butt of SA’s enormous wine offerings. A committed aficionado could easily spend every moment of their leave entitlements plumbing the depths of SA’s extensive wine territories while enjoying the peripheral delicacies like sumptuous ‘paddock to plate’, free-range and organic gourmet offerings ranging from dairy, meat, olive and delicious fruit of all kinds.
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