Travelling South

Men’s Style Visits Adelaide and Mclaren Vale in South Australia to Work Out Whether the State Really Is on the Rise as the Home of the Bespoke, Boutique Getaway.

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About 10 years ago Men’s Style was invited on a trip by South Australian Tourism which focused heavily on the state’s industrial capacity – in between some great meals and local wines, the media contingent spent a lot of time in hard-hats and white-tissue overalls visiting the Holden factory, RM Williams, and the submarine-building facility at Osborne.

How fast times change. A decade on, SA Tourism invited us back, and this time there wasn’t a production line or a machining tool in sight. This trip was all about “boutique SA”, an introduction to the ever expanding range of dining, wining, cultural and day trip experiences available to a visitor arriving in Adelaide.

As SA Tourism’s Brent Hill tells Men’s Style over lunch at Etica Pizza al Taglio in Adelaide’s Halifax St (now nationally famous due to the social media controversy around the whole cow which hangs from the internal roof of the eatery), South Australia understands it can’t compete with Sydney and Melbourne on certain big-city attractions. Instead, says Hill, it offers some unbeatable bespoke itineraries starting in ever-quaint Adelaide and involving three world-class wine regions less than an hour away in the Barossa, McLaren Vale, and the Adelaide Hills.

There’s a sizeable makeover currently on the go in Adelaide itself, which quickly becomes clear during a rickshaw ride with EcoCaddy around the city that takes in redeveloped eating precincts such as Vardon Avenue and Peel St – the epicentre of the small bar phenomenon that has been embraced by Adelaide as well as the rest of the nation – the expanded Adelaide Oval, the new Royal Adelaide Hospital, the Central Market and Grote Street.