Things to Do in Adelaide in March

A full day on the water in the Coorong, that long, narrow lagoon system stretching southeast of Adelaide behind the sand dunes of the Younghusband Peninsula. You paddle through channels where the water shifts from brackish amber to clear turquoise, past pelican colonies nesting on low sandbars and black swans gliding through beds of aquatic grass. The silence is striking once your group moves away from the launch point: just the dip of paddles, the occasional cry of a sea eagle overhead, and the faint hiss of wind through the coastal scrub.

Two days on Kangaroo Island strips away the notion that Australian wildlife requires a long outback expedition. The island sits just off the Fleurieu Peninsula, reached by ferry from Cape Jervis about ninety minutes south of Adelaide, and within hours of arriving you are standing downwind of a colony of Australian sea lions at Seal Bay, close enough to hear the deep, guttural bark of the bulls and smell the briny kelp they haul themselves across. The tour moves through eucalyptus woodland where koalas wedge themselves into the forks of manna gums, and across open heath where kangaroos and wallabies graze in the low amber light of late afternoon. Accommodation is included, and waking up on the island to the sound of kookaburras and the cool scent of morning dew on bushland is worth the trip on its own.

A private wine tour through McLaren Vale or the Adelaide Hills lets you taste your way through two of South Australia's most distinctive wine regions without negotiating unfamiliar roads or designating a driver. McLaren Vale spreads across gently rolling country south of Adelaide, its vineyards backed by the olive groves and almond orchards of the Willunga escarpment, and the wines here lean toward bold shiraz and grenache with a sun-soaked, Mediterranean warmth. The Adelaide Hills, by contrast, climb into cooler elevations east of the city, producing pinot noir and chardonnay with a tighter, more restrained character, the tasting rooms often tucked into old stone farmhouses surrounded by towering gums. Your driver tailors the itinerary to your palate, and the privacy means you can linger at a cellar door that catches your interest rather than being herded onto the next stop.

There is something irreducibly pleasurable about driving a classic Mustang convertible through the Barossa Valley with the top down, the warm March air carrying the scent of dry grass and grapevines as you roll past stone churches and corrugated-iron farmsteads that date to the 1840s German settlements. This half-day private tour for two puts you in the passenger seat of a gleaming, restored Mustang while a local guide handles the driving and the commentary, threading through the back roads between Tanunda, Angaston, and Lyndoch where the tourist buses do not go. You stop at cellar doors, take in the patchwork of vineyard and pasture from elevated lookouts, and the car itself becomes half the experience: the throaty rumble of the engine, the chrome catching the afternoon sun, the envious looks from other motorists.

Adelaide is a city designed for walking, its one-mile-square grid laid out by Colonel William Light in 1836 with a foresight that still benefits pedestrians nearly two centuries later, and this guided tour makes the most of that geometry. You move through the Central Market, where the cool interior smells of ripe stone fruit, cured meats, and freshly ground coffee, then out into the laneways where street art covers the brick walls and small bars operate behind unmarked doors. The route takes in North Terrace's institutional spine, the sandstone Parliament House, the Art Gallery of South Australia, the old University of Adelaide cloisters with their Gothic Revival arches, and the guide fills the spaces between with stories about the city's history as a free-settler colony, its complicated relationship with the surrounding Kaurna land, and the characters who shaped its identity.

Hahndorf sits in the Adelaide Hills about twenty-five minutes from the city centre, a town founded by Lutheran refugees from Prussia in 1839, and its main street still carries a distinctly German character: half-timbered shopfronts, bakeries turning out pretzels and streuselkuchen, and a faint sweetness in the air from the nearby orchards and the Beerenberg strawberry farm. An e-bike tour strips away the effort of climbing the Hills roads while keeping the sensory immediacy that a car window blocks: you feel the cooler air as you climb out of the valley, smell the eucalyptus and pine that line the back roads, and stop at cellar doors and producers that sit off the main street where the coach tours never reach. The electric assist means the rolling terrain between vineyards and orchards is accessible to anyone with basic cycling confidence, and the food and wine stops are generous.