Stories
Longer reads, travel guides and field notes from the Fleurieu Peninsula.
The Star of Greece: a wreck on the Port Willunga reef
On the morning of 13 July 1888, the iron square-rigger Star of Greece broke up on the reef at Port Willunga. Seventeen men died within sight of the shore while rescuers stood helpless on the cliffs. The wreck site is still there.
April 2026 · 8 min read
The Italian families who built modern McLaren Vale
After the Second World War, families from southern Italy bought land at the edge of McLaren Vale and started planting. Eighty years later, their names are stamped on half the cellar doors in the Vale and on most of its best restaurants.
April 2026 · 9 min read
A short white window: 170 years of Willunga almonds
Willunga's almond-growing tradition stretches back to the 1850s. For most of the 20th century it was Australia's largest almond region. The famous Almond Blossom Festival has run since 1970.
March 2026 · 5 min read
Ngarrindjeri Country: the Coorong, the lakes and the river mouth
The Ngarrindjeri are the Traditional Owners of the Lower Murray, the Lower Lakes and the Coorong - some of the most ecologically and culturally significant Country in southern Australia. Their continuing connection to land and water has shaped the Fleurieu south-east for tens of thousands of years.
March 2026 · 7 min read
The shore-based whalers of Encounter Bay
Between 1837 and the 1860s, two rival whaling stations operated from the Bluff at Victor Harbor. They hunted the southern right whale to local extinction in less than three decades. The whales are only now beginning to return.
March 2026 · 6 min read
When Goolwa was an inland port
Between the 1850s and the 1890s, Goolwa was one of the busiest ports in colonial South Australia. Paddle steamers brought wool, wheat, copper and timber down the Murray, and a horse-drawn tramway carried it the last few kilometres to the open sea.
March 2026 · 6 min read
The Heysen Trail: 1,200km on foot
From the Cape Jervis ferry terminal to a remote gorge in the northern Flinders Ranges, the Heysen Trail is one of Australia's longest walking trails. The Fleurieu has its first hundred kilometres.
March 2026 · 6 min read
The Cornish slate miners of Willunga
Slate was discovered at Willunga in 1840. For the next eighty years it built the town and roofed half of South Australia. The miners were Cornish, the village they founded was named after a slate town in Cornwall, and the legacy is still visible in the streets today.
February 2026 · 6 min read
Why McLaren Vale Shiraz tastes the way it does
If McLaren Vale Shiraz tastes like nowhere else in Australia, it is because nowhere else has its specific accident of geography. A short history of why this small region punches so far above its weight.
February 2026 · 7 min read