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Along The Southeastern Winding Way - Adelaide To Melbourne
Australia is one of the most child-friendly western countries families can visit. Clean and relatively cheap if you are traveling with American dollars and with a relaxed outdoor lifestyle, it's a country worth considering for a family holiday of a week or more.
The only drawback is that it is such a huge place, there is often confusion as to exactly what you should plan. Your answer may be similar to the one that the Eliste family from New York reached. Hire a private jet and be flown around the country! They have done this for the last four years and return annually.
If private jets are just a touch out of your league, then driving may be the answer. There are good roads which are (usually) well sign-posted. One of the best family road trips to take is the one between the state capital cities of Adelaide and Melbourne in the southeastern part of the country. Wildlife is abundant and beaches dot the entire coastline, so buckets and spades were at the top of the luggage heap and constantly in use on our recent outing.
East from Adelaide
Heading east out of Adelaide, it's a fast pleasant drive to the first significant town of Tailem Bend before turning south to the coast. In the car, myself and my 10-month-old were accompanied by a good friend and her one-year-old. The one-year-old started a screeching contest with my offspring within an hour of leaving Adelaide, so it was with great relief that we pulled up at Poltalloch Station.
This is a large sheep farm or station on the peaceful shores of Lake Albert scratched out of the wilderness by an adventurous 13-year-old who sailed from England in 1839 with his brother and a flock of sheep. His descendants have preserved the old farm and shearing relics dating back hundreds of years in fascinating displays.
We wandered around the old blacksmithery, explored the giant wool shed and poked our heads into the rustic work sheds. The farm offers a tame kangaroo for the kids to watch as well as tennis and swimming. Next day, I went for an early morning walk by the lake where the silvery water rippled and splashed to acrobatic displays of pecking, squawking flocks of birds.
Coorong National Park
We followed the highway to Meningie, a quaint little town with cafés and art shops, before wandering along the 100-kilometer stretch that comprises the Coorong National Park. A long ribbon of saline lagoon is separated from the southern ocean by sand dunes sporting a name with imaginative family flavor, Younghusband Peninsula. It is the product of the longest river system in Australia--the Murray-Darling--which drains about one seventh of the country's total area. We delighted in sighting a few of the 200 species of birds which flap, flutter, poke, strut and swim there, whispers of faraway lands such as Siberia and Alaska floating on their feathers.
Stopping at a few lookouts I drank in the serenity, feeling my pre-occupations with city life float away with the tide. I felt pleasantly isolated in a seemingly uninhabited, long sandy stretch of coast gently lapped by a very calm ocean. Lagoon and inlets reflected low hills and picturesque sand dunes in the blue silvery water and birds lazily stretched their wings in the great sunny blue arc of sky.
Even the children quietened down for the Coorong, gazing in wonder at the wide horizons of tranquillity. They recovered when we hit the town of Kingston for lunch by a clean quiet beach soon resounding to their calls to the birds. From the Cape Jaffa Lighthouse we sighted the fantastic large and strange birds called emus and cute and cuddly wombats before heading further south to my favourite town on that part of the country: Robe.
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