Stories
Longer reads, travel guides and field notes from the Limestone Coast.
Coonawarra: The Red Strip Explained
Coonawarra's fame rests on a cigar-shaped strip of red terra rossa soil over limestone. Here is why those few kilometres matter so much.
June 2026 · 6 min read
Robe and the Great Chinese Walk to the Goldfields
In the 1850s, tens of thousands of Chinese miners landed at Robe and set out on foot for the Victorian goldfields, in one of the great migrations of the gold rush.
June 2026 · 6 min read
Naracoorte: A Window Into the Ice Age
For hundreds of thousands of years, the caves at Naracoorte trapped and preserved the giant beasts of ice-age Australia. Their bones tell an unmatched story.
June 2026 · 7 min read
Mary MacKillop and the Little Town That Made a Saint
In a humble Penola schoolhouse, a young teacher named Mary MacKillop began a movement that would lead, more than a century later, to canonisation.
June 2026 · 6 min read
How Mount Gambier Became Australia's Cave-Diving Capital
The water-filled sinkholes around Mount Gambier draw divers from around the world, into some of the most beautiful and demanding underwater caves on Earth.
June 2026 · 7 min read
The Tantanoola Tiger: A Limestone Coast Legend
In the 1890s a mysterious predator terrorised the farms around Tantanoola. The truth, when it came, was stranger than the legend.
June 2026 · 6 min read
A long weekend on the Limestone Coast
Wine, World Heritage caves, crater lakes and surf beaches - the Limestone Coast offers an unusual amount of variety, and three days is just enough to taste it.
June 2026 · 5 min read
At the southern edge: Port MacDonnell
South Australia's southernmost town is a working lobster port wrapped in volcanic coast, freshwater springs and literary history.
June 2026 · 4 min read
The thin red line: understanding terra rossa
Coonawarra's reputation rests on a band of red earth barely a few hundred metres wide in places. Here is what makes terra rossa over limestone so special.
June 2026 · 5 min read
When 16,000 miners landed at Robe
In the late 1850s the quiet port of Robe became the landing point for tens of thousands of Chinese miners, who walked hundreds of kilometres overland to dodge a Victorian entry tax.
June 2026 · 5 min read
Reading half a million years at Naracoorte Caves
In the dark chambers beneath Naracoorte lies one of the richest fossil deposits on Earth - the bones of giant marsupials that fell into pit traps over hundreds of thousands of years.
June 2026 · 6 min read
Caves of the Limestone Coast
The Limestone Coast is riddled with caves. We tour the best, from Naracoorte's fossil treasure to the sparkling chambers of Tantanoola.
June 2026 · 6 min read