Things to Do in Adelaide in January

A full day on the water in Coorong National Park means paddling through shallow, briny lagoons separated from the Southern Ocean by a narrow ribbon of sand dunes called the Younghusband Peninsula. The kayak sits low. You hear the wet slap of pelican wings lifting off meters ahead. The salt-flat smell of mudflats mingles with iodine tang of ocean air drifting over dunes. This landscape inspired the film Storm Boy. In a kayak you understand why. The light here is enormous, bouncing between water and sky until the horizon dissolves.

Two days on Kangaroo Island strips away mainland noise. It replaces it with the low roar of New Zealand fur seals barking on rocks at Admiral's Arch. The crunch of boots on bleached-white sand at Vivonne Bay. The sweet, resinous smell of eucalyptus forest where koalas wedge themselves into manna gum forks. The small-group format means your guide stops when a Rosenberg's goanna crosses red-dirt road. Or when glossy black cockatoos work over a she-oak. Moments a bus tour would blow past. Notable Rocks, those wind-sculpted granite boulders balanced on a coastal dome above Kirkpatrick Point, glow orange at sunset. No photograph has ever adequately captured this.

A private wine tour through McLaren Vale or the Adelaide Hills is less about ticking off cellar doors. It is more about understanding how drastically different two regions separated by thirty minutes of driving can taste. McLaren Vale sits on ancient Cambrian soils near the coast. In January, shiraz grapes darken on the vine while warm breezes carry wild fennel smell growing between rows. The Adelaide Hills, higher and cooler, produces chardonnay and sauvignon blanc with acidity that feels alpine by comparison. Cellar doors up there tend toward stone cottages surrounded by towering ash and oak trees where air is noticeably cooler than the valley floor.

Sliding into the leather bench seat of a classic Ford Mustang convertible with the top down and the Barossa Valley unrolling ahead is an absurdly cinematic way to tour wine country. The half-day format keeps it from tipping into indulgence. The engine rumbles through Tanunda's main street, past bluestone Lutheran churches built by Silesian settlers in the 1840s, and out into old-vine shiraz blocks where gnarled trunks are thicker than your thigh. Wind pulls at your hair. The smell of warm earth and fermenting grape must drifts across the road. You understand why the Barossa inspires loyalty in its winemakers that borders on the religious.

Walking Adelaide's city center with a knowledgeable guide reveals the logic beneath the grid. Colonel William Light's 1836 plan laid out streets in a precise pattern bordered by parklands. On foot you notice what driving obscures: ornate cast-iron lacework on terraces along North Adelaide's Melbourne Street, cool sandstone interiors of Adelaide Arcade with tiled floors and pressed-metal ceilings from 1885, and how Rundle Mall transitions abruptly into East End's laneway culture where espresso bars and record shops occupy converted cottages. In January, the city smells of roasting coffee grounds escaping from open cafe doors and the faintly sweet scent of jacaranda seed pods drying on warm pavement.

An e-bike takes the work out of climbing gentle hills around Hahndorf, Australia's oldest surviving German settlement. It replaces effort with the pleasure of coasting between cellar doors and farmgate producers with Adelaide Hills breeze cooling your face. The town's main street is lined with half-timbered buildings. Slow-smoked smallgoods smell drifts from artisan butchers. The e-bike tour pulls you beyond the tourist strip into surrounding farmland where you stop at boutique vineyards pouring cool-climate pinot noir and producers pressing olive oil from trees planted in the 1930s. You taste things still warm from the oven or cold from the cellar, standing in paddocks where grass stays green even in high summer.