HINDMARSH ISLAND

On recent Christmas trips to visit Sebastian in Adelaide, we’ve tried to include a few days in the countryside. Our only criteria are finding a place that will allow Sebastian to travel with Chaos, his cat, and a place that is near a swimmable beach. Last year, it was Port Hughes on the York Peninsula. This year, it was Hindmarsh island, near the mouth of the Murray River.

The first time I visited Goolwa, the nearest town to the island, was via train. I spent some time in 2019 in Adelaide as locum Managing Director for Australian Dance Theatre. I’d been on the Board of the company in the mid-1980s when I was studying for my MBA so it was fascinating to revisit the company and the city over 30 years later. Each weekend, I tried to visit a new part of Adelaide or the nearby countryside. Up to the Barossa Valley. Snorkelling in the river mangroves near Port Gawler. Up to Handoff to visit the Heysen home. Down to the beach at Noarlunga. Wine tasting in McLaren Vale. And on one weekend, I caught an old train from Mount Barker to Goolwa through the Fleurieu Peninsular.

This time, Goolwa was a passing point, and a market point, and a gallery point, and a shopping point, on the way to Hindmarsh Island. Some of you may remember the fierce debate about the building of a bridge from the mainland to the island. There was a battle to stop the bridge because the land involved was a place of secret women’s business. Or so said some members but not all of the local indigenous community. In the end, the government - and the developers - won the battle. The bridge enabled the rapid increase of a retirement aged population around marinas on the island. Because Goolwa is now so accessible, there is nothing much in the way of shops and services on the island: just one tavern and one fish and chip shack. 

Our rental was on the Mundoo Channel, part of the Murray River close to where it feeds out to the ocean through the Cadell Passage.The house was on the water front with its own jetty. I was lucky enough to have the room with the view and left the blinds up so that I could wake up to the sunrise and the wide array of seabirds floating past. We saw pelicans and cormorants, seagulls and ducks, ibis and darters, crested tern and royal spoonbills, swans and grebes. Glorious just to sit out on the deck and the watch the world fly/float by. Every so often a tinnie would motor past but that was about the only human sound apart from an energetic lawnmower one day.

We had one adventure each day in between bird watching at home - a hike to the mouth of the Murray, a drive to Port Elliott to visit some second hand shops, a cruise along the Coorong. It reminds me of why I’ve never contemplated buying a holiday home. I’d rather go somewhere different every time and explore new parts of the country and seaside.