RAISE A GLASS TO OZ!
From islands rich in wildlife to the finest wine on a magical desert train . . .
We LOVe wildlife, my husband adores trains — and we both enjoy wine. These were the fairly loose parameters I set our travel agent. And this is how my husband, Jim, and I came to be exploring an island we’d never heard of, travelling nearly 2,000 miles on one of the world’s most luxurious trains and sampling the finest wines Australia has to offer.
Kangaroo Island, a short ferry ride from the mainland, south-west of Adelaide, is Australia’s third-largest island. From the moment you step ashore, you feel as though you’ve gone back several decades. The population is just over 4,000 and more than a third of the island is pristine wilderness, given over to nature reserves.
I was excited to see kangaroos — though the only ones we encountered were a few semi-domesticated old bucks next to an art gallery in the middle of nowhere.
But the birdlife was breathtaking. We found ourselves stopping every few hundred yards to train our binoculars on colourful lorikeets, crimson rosellas and sulphur-crested cockatoos.
Kangaroo Island wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea. It’s pretty cold. We were there in March and had to pile on layers to protect ourselves from the stiff sea breeze.
Our hotel, in the main town, Kingscote, was simple but clean, and navigating our way around the island was straightforward.
We loved watching the penguins and seals in Flinders Chase National Park, and the aptly named Remarkable Rocks were equally beguiling.
Jim has never been a fan of Australian wine, so it was with some trepidation that we took the ferry back and drove north through the Fleurieu Peninsula ‘wine coast’ to McLaren Vale.
But the fine wines we sampled in numerous wineries completely changed Jim’s mind and the food was magnificent.
We stayed in what I think must be one of the best B&Bs in the world — in an unpretentious bungalow in McLaren Vale town.
The full breakfast, our cheery host warned us, would require an hour-and-a-half of our time. Cereals, fresh fruits and toast were a precursor to the house speciality: pancakes with apricot jam.
And that feast was followed by a fry-up! We could hardly move.
And so to the final instalment of our adventure: the train. The famous Ghan cuts a path through the vast outback of the red continent, from Adelaide to tropical Darwin. This is a two-and-a-half-day trip for those who want to sit back and enjoy the ride. The Ghan is a beast of a train, all gleaming hot metal with an impressive red livery. We were lucky enough to be assigned a Platinum cabin, of which there are just ten to house 20 people in considerable style. We were welcomed aboard by George, in his smart uniform and Aussie hat, who presented us with a glass of chilled pink champagne. It wasn’t even 10am, but it seemed the perfect toast for the start of our adventure. The journey was pure luxury from beginning to end: the food superb, the wines excellent. But what I hadn’t expected was the chance to get off the train and venture into the outback. At the legendary town of Alice Springs we took a Desert Park tour. Our driver was a personable young woman called Alana, one of Alice’s 28,000 residents. She told us we were lucky because the temperature was going to be a ‘coolish’ 31c.
The Desert Park is dominated by the MacDonnell Ranges and we were thrilled to see wild wedge-tailed eagles soaring high above the peaks.
After another night of indulgence — champagne before dinner and brandy at the bedside — we came to a halt at Katherine, another town in the Northern Territory, where it was a searing 36c.
Now, I’d never heard of Katherine — though 6,000 people live there — and I certainly hadn’t imagined that there would be a complex river system running through this apparently desolate region.
But we were offered a cruise down the Nitmiluk Gorge, a cultural tour or a helicopter ride over the Katherine River and its huge sandstone cliffs.
We chose the cruise, which was two wonderful boat rides down two of the 13 gorges, which have been carved by the river over 23 million years.
The Ghan was a brilliant way to experience the scorching outback. We arrived back at Darwin in awe of all that Australia has to offer.