Things to Do in Adelaide in March

A full day kayaking the Coorong lets you read the South Australian coast in longhand. The narrow lagoon system lies southeast of the Murray Mouth, shielded from the Southern Ocean by the Younghusband Peninsula's dunes. Water stays glassy. Salt air rolls over low scrub while pelicans drift in loose squadrons. You glide through channels where the only sounds are your paddle slicing, surf crashing beyond the dunes, oystercatchers calling along the shoreline.

Two days on Kangaroo Island recalibrate scale. The island sits across Backstairs Passage from the Fleurieu Peninsula. Mainland cliffs are visible from Penneshaw. Koalas doze in roadside gums. New Zealand fur seals pile onto Admiral's Arch rocks with no barrier between you and their fish-scented chorus. Small-group tours let the guide stop when a glossy black-cockatoo lands on a she-oak or when echidnas shuffle across the dirt at dusk.

South Australia's wine country splits into two moods. This private tour lets you pick. McLaren Vale rolls toward the coast south of Adelaide, grenache and shiraz from ancient soils, cellar doors open-sided where eucalyptus drifts in from surrounding bush. The Adelaide Hills climb into cooler air east of the city, sauvignon blanc, pinot noir, chardonnay, tasting rooms tucked among tall gums and misty valleys that feel more Tasmania than mainland.

Driving a classic Mustang convertible through the Barossa with the top down is theatrical, and the Barossa loves theatre. The road climbs through scrubby hills north of Gawler then drops into a wide valley floor, shiraz rows running toward the Barossa Ranges. Wind tugs your sleeves. The engine growls. Tanunda's stone churches and Angaston's heritage shopfronts arrive with cinematic punch no SUV can match.

Adelaide's grid, laid out by Colonel William Light in 1837 with a belt of parkland on every edge, makes sense only on foot. This guided walk follows North Terrace's sandstone facades, dives into laneways where street art and small-batch roasters occupy former warehouses, and explains why wide boulevards and public squares still work nearly two centuries later. Roasting beans from a Rundle Street laneway mingle with jasmine spilling over a bluestone wall just south of Hindley. The guide links each detail to the story of a planned colonial capital that functioned.

Hahndorf, Australia's oldest surviving German settlement, sits in the Adelaide Hills thirty minutes east of the city. Arrive by e-bike along bush-scented trails and you coast into town with lungs full of eucalyptus and the quiet hum of the motor helping on climbs. The main street is half-timbered façades housing smokehouse delis, artisan cheese rooms, cellar doors pouring cool-climate wines. The tour stitches tastings with riding through orchards and vineyard blocks where the only traffic is the occasional ute kicking dust.