Drove on to the River Port of Goolwa, the (purported) eastern gateway to the Fleurieu Peninsula. If I'd done more research I would have known this is the place to be: one can reeadily get to Hindmarsh Island and the Murray Mouth, and Kangaroo Island sits at the end of the peninsula. Suffice it to say that the good bits here are west of Meningie.
Goolwa was a river port, where goods carried on barges down the river were loaded onto the railway to an ocean port. Supposedly the railway is the oldest public one in Australia. Now it's all touristic.
Drove to the Goolwa Barrage, then on to the boat launch. Walked from there to the Murray Mouth on the Sir Richard Peninsula. As the guy in the info centre said, yes, you can do that, but it's a long (three hour return) hard slog through some uninspiring scrub on an evasive track. It's the sort of thing only someone who'd never think of doing it could assent to.
This is the Murray Mouth from side on (Southern Ocean on the right, Lake Alexandrina on the left, Younghusband Peninsula straight on). The incoming waves exert more force than the freshwater from the river, and given the four-States-and-the-Feds politics involved, South Australia has decided to use Federal money to continuously dredge the Mouth so the Coorong gets the occasional flow.
I tried to cadge a lift back from the mouth from some fisherpeople but was rebuffed on the pretext of no space. They warned me off trying the ocean side, which I think was pretty self-evident given the wind, though perhaps not to me in my ennui-enervated state. A solitary brown snake was a little more friendly on the way back.
The touristic alternative to my hike is to drive through Hindmarsh Island and look at the Mouth from directly opposite. Note to self: drive first, then maybe walk. There's a new Marina Development designed to milk Adelaide's BMW / wine tour set, and some McMansioning west of that. I opportunistically and expensively grabbed some lunch at Bocca Bella's Café at the crossroads, housed in an old school building. Good food, effusive hosts.
This is the Murray Mouth from straight-on, and it's easy to imagine the Mouth when there was more water flow.
In this part of Australia all roads lead to (or equally, away from) Adelaide. I naively followed the signs that said "City" and before I knew it the Anzac Highway left me on their George Street equivalent. Perhaps Church Street is a better approximation as Adelaide seems quite like Parramatta to me. I found an internet café and quickly surmised that there was no theatre on in the near future; the town is hibernating in preparation for the all-consuming Festival. Similarly a lot of hostels appeared to be mostly full, though as usual there was a bed to be had, in this case in a ten-man dorm in the Shakespeare Hostel. Apparently they mostly cater for international uni students while they find somewhere to stay. Pretty standard as far as backpackers go.
Hit the world-famous Rundell St with An from Melbourne, a friend-for-the-night from the hostel, ending up at The Elephant (British) Bar on Fringe Alley. We reckon there's a man shortage in Adelaide, most men in town are cops, and there's a cop on every street.
