Fleurieu Living Magazine Autumn 2026

The colours of the Fleurieu in Autumn. Awesome!

Sarah Homes are number 1 for holiday homes and homes that make you feel like you’re on holiday. It’s easy to see why! They’re designed to include generous living areas and expansive decking. A brilliant space for entertaining or just relaxing. Wide opening sliding doors and full-length windows deliver wonderful views and let you retreat to sunlit comfort.

We have a great selection of 1 and 2 storey home designs. Visit a Sarah Homes Display soon and discover just how easy it is to enjoy the Fleurieu’s easy lifestyle.

Our display homes are open seven days a week and can be explored at Victor Harbor, Pooraka, Mile

Old

and Murray

Visit our website for details. The Old

open during renovations, with three stunning new homes arriving in 2026.

Key personnel

Petra de Mooy

Petra is a former furniture designer and maker turned publisher. She loves gardening, good design and storytelling and celebrating the region’s homes, gardens, foodies, artists and destinations with curiosity and creativity.

Jason Porter

Jason has worked as a graphic designer, creative director and more recently photographer for almost forty years. When not in the office, he can often be found in the garage working on his 1963 Chevrolet Impala Super Sport.

Emma Craggs

Emma brings with her a passionate and strategic mindset, drawing from her extensive experience in brand marketing. When she’s not at FLM, you’ll find her running Bio Fit – a local gym she owns with her husband, David.

Jessie Byrne

Jessie is a writer and editor. She loves a good story and a well-placed apostrophe.  Her other day job is director of Byrne Kelley, a strategic content company she runs with her childhood best friend, Yvonne Kelley.

Other contributing writers, photographers and stylists

Jacob Barter, Diana Brandt, India Chappell, Tyler

Jackson Chappell, Hollie Connery, Taylor Davis, Poppy Fitzpatrick, Nina Keath, Mark Laurie, Sam Marchetti, Darren Oemcke. Erin Scott, Myriah Smith, Katie Spain, Esther Thorn and Sarah Wade.

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Publisher information

PUBLISHER

Fleurieu Living Magazine is published four times a year by Fleurieu Living Pty Ltd ISSN 2200-4033

PUBLISHING EDITOR AND MANAGING DIRECTOR

Petra de Mooy petra@fleurieuliving.com.au

GRAPHIC DESIGNER AND CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Jason Porter jason@fleurieuliving.com.au

ADVERTISING SALES

Emma Craggs emma@fleurieuliving.com.au

COPY EDITOR

Dr Jessie Byrne

PRINTER

Newstyle Print

DISTRIBUTION

Wrapaway

SUBSCRIPTIONS

Print: isubscribe.com.au

Digital: zinio.com

ALL ENQUIRIES

Petra de Mooy

petra@fleurieuliving.com.au

POSTAL ADDRESS

PO Box 111, Aldinga, South Australia 5173

ONLINE fleurieuliving.com.au facebook.com/FleurieuLivingMagazine instagram.com/fleurieulivingmagazine/

COPYRIGHT

All content is the copyright of Fleurieu Living Magazine Pty Ltd unless otherwise stated.

While Fleurieu Living Magazine takes every care to ensure the accuracy of information in this publication, the publisher accepts no liability for errors in editorial or advertising copy. The views of the contributors are not necessarily endorsed by Fleurieu Living Magazine.

Printed on paper from well-managed forests and controlled sources using environmentally friendly vegetable-based inks.

Our advertising partners

A special thanks to the advertising partners that have made a long-term commitment to FLM.

From the publishing editor

Sitting in our office early one morning, just

a week

before going to print, there is a cacophony of corellas swirling around and making their mournful (read irritating) call. These birds do not seem to have an internal clock. They wake up too early and go to bed too late.

For me, they also herald the end of summer. There is a crescendo of hot weather and corellas, and I begin to wonder why I bothered with summer vegetables. The cucumber received litres and litres of water and still only yielded a couple of cucumbers. Best leave it to the experts at the farmers market (note to self).

The beaches stretch out with just a few walkers, and swimmers are there year-round. When the skies quiet, the birds have flown north and the leaves turn, there is less daylight and we are also less busy. So autumn is a great time to make change.

On the change front, this issue marks our last with dear Emma Craggs. We love her and she will be missed here in the office. Her Cookie Monster laugh and her positive disposition. Her big heart and her get-it-done attitude. We wish her well in her next role – you’ll surely see her at a wine event or two. It was great getting to know her better and to have her incredible strategic brain working with us to make improvements. We love her. Thanks, Emma!!!

As we transition to new staff, we are always looking forward and thinking positively. Recruiting is a fairly difficult process, but we have now landed on a tiered approach with a younger marketing gun in Taylor Davis and communications whiz India Chappell. Both live in the region and love the lifestyle. We are looking forward to your vision and teamwork.

As we step into the heart of autumn, this edition, as always, shows the depth and diversity of the region. From the contemplative beauty of the former Primitive Methodist church, now a home in Middleton, to the rich offerings in both Destination Port Elliot and A Taste of Kangaroo Island, we explore spaces, flavours and stories that are uniquely local.

It was great to sit down and talk to a variety of graduates and the facilitators of the Fleurieu Future Leaders program, which is celebrating ten years in 2026. The program explores the community as a living, evolving ecosystem.

Another home feature details the reimagining of Port Elliot’s Ponderosa property through design and creativity, brought to life through one family’s collaboration and vision, working alongside award-winning 4Life Construction.

Across art, wine, food, sustainability and destinations, this issue is an invitation to connect with, savour and immerse yourself in the richness of our region.

Below: Pennington Bay. The five-day self-drive gourmet explorer package to Kangaroo Island was fantastic. See what's included on page 28.

FOOD, WINE & SPIRITS

52 No imports, no apologies: Salopian Inn

70 For the love of local: Shifty Lizard

92 T he autumn cool-down: red wines you are going to love

94 From Vietnam with love: Han Nguyen

96 Pomology @ Tarrawood

42 Under the Sun: three winemakers, one roof

FESTIVALS & EVENTS

10 D iary dates for autumn ... we’ve got’em

34 Fleurieu Biennale 5 June – 5 July

PEOPLE ON THE PENINSULA

66 Community as ecosystem: ten years of Fleurieu Future Leaders

54 A voice for the wild: Pete Owen

MAKING THE FLEURIEU HOME

Fleurieu local agents proudly representing Australia’s #1 agency, guiding you home to the coast.

Make a date

FESTIVALS AND EVENTS

March

Wine Down, Fly High (Adelaide Fringe)

Lawn area at Berg Herring Wines, Sellicks Beach 7-21 March

Wine Down, Fly High blends the art of winemaking with the beauty and strength of a contemporary aerial circus. Set against the stunning backdrop of McLaren Vale, this experience invites you to taste a flight of selected wines – brought to life through original aerial performances that capture the story, mood and essence of each pour. This isn’t a regular tasting. It’s an invitation to feel, taste and witness the connection between land, body and art!

Brown Bear Comedy Club

McLaren Flat Community Club

14 March, 6pm-11pm

Brown Bear Comedy hits McLaren Flat again! An incredible roster of talent has been assembled to keep audiences entertained. Raul Kohli, your sharp-witted host for the evening, guiding the laughs with style. Nona Mona – bold, brilliant and guaranteed to leave you in stitches. Darius Davies – a master of punchlines, bringing the big laughs. Justin Sorre – fearless, funny and full of surprises. From the UK to South Australia, Brown Bear Comedy delivers the best in established and rising comedic talent and this show is no exception.

Twilight Food Affair

Tatachilla Lutheran College, McLaren Vale 20 March, 4.30pm-9pm

Don’t miss one of the most loved family events in McLaren Vale,

showcasing some of the best international street food and wine produced in the Fleurieu region. This autumn, twilight-goers will be treated to carnival rides, sideshow entertainment, live music and a spectacular fireworks display at 9pm. This event is the perfect opportunity to make new memories with friends and family, all in the heart of vineyard country. No bookings required, simply come along on the night. Gold coin parking applies.

More information at tatachilla.sa.edu.au.

Red Hot Summer Tour

Kent Reserve, Victor Harbor

21 March

Red Hot Summer Tour 2026 is turning up the heat with a scorching all-Australian line-up. This epic day of live music will be headlined by our most iconic and enduring singer-songwriter, Paul Kelly – a master storyteller whose music is woven into the fabric of modern Australia. He’ll be joined by incredible talent, including Missy Higgins, The Cruel Sea, The Cat Empire, Kasey Chambers and Jess Hitchcock – making for an unforgettable celebration of homegrown talent. Make memories with this dazzling  concert under the open skies.

Alliance Française French Film Festival 2026

Victa Cinema, Victor Harbor

25 March-1 April

The Alliance Francaise French Film Festival will return to Victa Cinema for its fifth year running, offering a fantastic array of contemporary French cinema. The festival remains the largest celebration of French language and culture in Australia. With a lineup of nearly forty films and eighteen participating cities, 2026 is set

NOTE: For long-time or even sometime readers of FLM, you may notice our ‘Markets’ listing has been omitted. In an effort to create more space to focus on what’s happening seasonally in the region, we’ve opted to move the listing to our website (fleurieuliving.com.au/markets).

to be another exceptional edition. Get ready for this great selection of films on screen throughout the week. Visit victacinemas.com.au for more details.

She Bop Festival

Victa Cinema and Victor Harbor Town Hall

28 March, 4.30pm

Two stages. Same heartbeat. Different decibels.

At the town hall, the pulse of the She Rocks stage – sweaty, sharp, cathartic and deeply felt music that wants something, questions everything, and leaves no one standing still. And on the She Rules stage, pulled-back volume without softening the punch.

Inside the Victa Cinema, five artists deliver raw stories, quiet revelations, keys and harmonies, folk, R’n’B and songwriting that demands you lean in. These performances spill over with lived experience, identity, wanderlust, heartbreak, family and imagination, carried by voices that cut through the hush like floodlights in the dark. Tickets available at shebopfestival.com.au.

April

Autumn Fair

Willunga Waldorf School, Willunga 5 April, 10am-4pm

Join in all the fun of the Autumn Fair in the beautiful grounds of Willunga Waldorf School. Enjoy the village atmosphere, live music, coffee, cakes and good food. Discover local handmade products, plants and produce and a vast array of children’s activities. More information at wws.sa.edu.au.

May

Tasting Australia by Road – McLaren Vale

Departing Adelaide Marriott Hotel 8 May, 8.30am-5.30pm

Chef Karena Armstrong and Selina Kelly of Bondar Wines invite you to eat, drink and explore during a full-day road trip. Join them first for a breakfast-inspired snack and tour the private kitchen garden

that helps supply The Salopian Inn, Armstrong’s restaurant, where a mod-Oz menu is shaped by culinary adventure.

Venture on to a tasting at Trott Vineyard featuring bottles from Bondar, Thistledown and Willunga 100. The family-run Nomad Farms – not usually open to the public – will welcome guests for lunch. See the source of Tom Bradman and Verity Slee’s acclaimed pasture-raised produce. A meal from Armstrong is set to be paired with local wine. Afterwards, visit Papershell Farm near Willunga and tour the orchard alongside owner Surahn Sidhu.  https://tastingaustralia.com.au/ for further details. Tickets $450.

Tasting Australia by Road – Fleurieu Peninsula

Departing Adelaide Marriott Hotel 17 May, 8.30am-5.30pm

Spend a day with chef Brendan Roach and winemaker Charlotte Hardy as they introduce you to producers and experiences unique to the region. First is a visit to hilltop Macloran Farm to meet owners Tom and Aimee Cosentino. Delight in coastal views of the Coorong while enjoying a cocktail and snack.

A visit to Goolwa beach awaits before lunch where Ngarrindjeri elder Uncle Derrek Walker from Kuti Co will share the pipi shuffle, a practice used by Aboriginal people for millennia. Take lunch at Kuti Shack, with a relaxed menu from Roach, paired with Charlotte Dalton wines. Finally, arrive at The Joinery Wine Room in Port Elliot, run by Charlotte and her partner Ben Cooke of Cooke Brothers Wines. Encounter Bay distiller Henry Fisher will drop in too, offering a curated tasting. Chat wine and then play your part in production with a grape stomp.

https://tastingaustralia.com.au/ for further details. Tickets $450. >

Friday Twilights and Sunday Sessions

Never Never Distilling, McLaren Vale Every Friday and Sunday

What could possibly be better than live music, McLaren Vale views and an award-winning gin? Never Never plays host to the perfect start and end to your weekend. Think happy hours and tunes in a relaxed yet refined environment. Don’t forget the delicious Italian street food courtesy of Cucina di Strada to top it all off.

Recycled Runway

Tatachilla Estate

23 May 2026

Recycled Runway McLaren Vale celebrates creativity and conscious fashion, challenging participants to transform five preloved garments into runway-ready designs. Now in its third year, the event raises awareness about textile waste and champions upcycling, thrifting and more mindful approaches to style. Event tickets through Humanitix

ART EXHIBITIONS

Powerful Women (Kin)

Coral Street Art Space, Victor Harbor

6 February-28 March

Powerful Women (Kin) is a curated exhibition led by Ngunawal artist and emerging curator Kristal Matthews (Wilay Designs), celebrating the strength, influence and creative leadership of women who shape our lives, our communities and our arts practices. Opening at Coral Street Art Space on Ramindjeri Ngarrindjeri Country, Victor Harbor, the exhibition brings together works by Aboriginal and nonindigenous women artists, honouring themes of kinship, identity, intergenerational learning and women’s stories. The exhibition is grounded in the influence of matriarchs – nans, mothers, sisters and aunties – whose love, care, strength and guidance shape who we are and how we move through the world.

Together for Wilderness Botanic Gardens wisteria arbours, Adelaide March-May

The Wilderness Society SA presents a photographic exhibition celebrating some of South Australia’s remarkable wild places and the power of people united to protect them.

Smriti Sutra – Sculpting Stories and Myths

South Coast Regional Arts Centre, Goolwa 7 March-19 April

This exhibition of papier mâché sculptures by artist Sandhya Mulchandani’s is inspired by Gond tribal lore and Indian mythology. The Gond, an indigenous tribe of India, have long painted folklore and myth on the walls of their huts, passing stories through generations. Smriti Sutra reimagines this living tradition in vibrant papier mâché sculptures that are whimsical, meditative and richly textured. And they speak to the artist’s deep connection to Gond culture and her enduring love for the medium.

The Unifying Thread

Signal Point Experience Centre, Goolwa

14 March-3 May

Carol Coventry, Benda Holden, Paul Whitehead and David Hamilton: four southern Fleurieu Peninsula artists explore a range of media, including painting, pastel, copper, photography, gouache and more. Flora, fauna and the stunning landscapes of the region feature in the work of these seasoned artists and nature lovers. The unifying thread? A love of place and a desire to share.

Slow Lane Poetry Reading

Coral Street Art Space, Victor Harbor 21 March, 5.30pm-7.30pm

An evening of poetry with some of South Australia’s most talented and engaging poets. Join Mike Ladd, Chelsea Avard and Tracy McNally along with a special musical guest, surrounded by art in the beautiful confines of Coral Street Art Space. This is the perfect event for all poetry lovers: wine, accomplished readers and music tying together the rhythmic flow of words. Tickets $5 each with all proceeds going directly to the creatives.

Suburban Dancing

Coral Street Art Space, Victor Harbor 3 April-30 May

By local artist Zoe Crichton, this exhibition delves into the rhythms and patterns of suburban life, transforming everyday moments into visual poetry. Through photography and mixed media, Crichton captures the interplay between movement and stillness, inviting audiences to reflect on the beauty found in ordinary spaces. The opening event is free to attend but registration is appreciated.

YIELD YIELD YIELD YIELD YIELD STRENGTH

Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art 27 February — 8 June 2026

Art Gallery of South Australia

Samstag Museum of Art

Adelaide Botanic Garden

On Kaurna Yarta Free Entry

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#summerlikealocal

Across the season, photographers shared their favourite Fleurieu moments – capturing the essence of life on the peninsula. The response was authentic and inspiring, revealing a region that’s both relaxed and vibrant. Here’s a selection of standout entries —

a visual love letter to the Fleurieu Peninsula, shared to celebrate and inspire. The official campaign may be over, but we’d love you to keep sharing your photographic perspective on peninsula life. #fleurieulikealocal @fleurieulivingmagazine @officialfleurieupeninsula

The #summerlikealocal campaign was a collaboration between Fleurieu Living Magazine and Fleurieu Peninsula Tourism intended to celebrate the region through the eyes of locals and visitors who adore it.

Reimagining Ponderosa

Perched high above the grazing pastures of Hindmarsh Valley, a newly transformed home sits quietly within its landscape. Located on the property Ponderosa, this adaptive re-use project has been shaped by heritage, contemporary craftsmanship and a close family collaboration between Chris and Tracey Smith, their son Lewis Smith and their team at Collectiv Group.

Look skyward and you might spot a nankeen kestrel suspended mid-air, scanning the landscape or winging its way to the shimmering ocean on the horizon. The image of these birds hovering effortlessly in the air is akin to the completed home at Ponderosa with its balance between old and new, restraint and warmth, rural working property and refined retreat.

Chris and Tracey purchased Ponderosa in 2020, drawn immediately to its scale, sweeping views and proximity to the coast, just minutes from Port Elliot and Victor Harbor. Fenced paddocks, multiple dams and vast open skies define the property. But it’s the home, an original bluestone cottage thoughtfully extended, that tells the most compelling story – one shaped not just by architecture and construction, but by a family working together and a builder willing to listen.

From the outset, Chris carried a clear overarching vision for Ponderosa: a master-planned rural estate that balanced heritage architecture with contemporary design. As co-founder of Collectiv Group, Chris saw the potential to evolve the site over time, creating a destination that felt grounded in the Fleurieu landscape while offering flexibility for family and future guests.

An early architectural vision was developed by Jet O’Rourke of Cumulus Studio, imagining the cottage as part of a series of accommodation pods spread across the property. >

While that larger masterplan remains a future stage, it provided a conceptual plan for how the accommodation would function. Working alongside Jet, Collectiv Group refined the design direction, developed the project vision, and managed it through the planning and approvals process. This crucial stage of shaping the concept into something both aspirational and buildable formed the bridge between initial design and construction.

With approvals secured and a clear direction established, 4Life Constructions was engaged to deliver the build. Although Chris was not involved in day-to-day construction, his original vision informed every decision that followed, ensuring continuity from concept through to completion.

At the heart of the property remained the two-storey bluestone cottage. Its interior had been basic and largely used for storage, but its presence was undeniable. Rather than compete with it, the extension would sit respectfully alongside it.

Tracey led the interior design and styling direction, ensuring the home would feel warm, calm and highly functional.

‘We wanted it to feel welcoming,’ she says. ‘Even though it’s a large house, it needed to feel comfortable, never ostentatious.’

Lewis took on the role of project manager, overseeing the project end to end. He managed contracts across every trade and subcontractor, controlled budgets, coordinated timelines and oversaw overall delivery, as well as future development planning. Acting as the central conduit between vision and execution, he ensured every moving part aligned.

Based on the Fleurieu Peninsula, 4Life Constructions is led by Matt Cates, a carpenter by trade whose career has evolved from handson building into managing complex, design-led projects. Working under a design-and-construct model, Matt collaborated closely with Lewis and Tracey to refine internal layouts and construction details while remaining true to the architectural intent. >

‘The exterior stayed very true to the architect’s drawings,’ Tracey explains. ‘Internally, we worked closely with Matt to improve functionality and flow. He was excellent at problem-solving and helping us achieve the look we wanted while making sure it worked practically.’

Layouts were adjusted to improve liveability. Internal staircases were reconfigured for better circulation. Bathrooms and laundries were refined. Outdoor zones were reshaped to strengthen connections between levels and landscape. Throughout the build, communication remained clear and the solutions focused.

One of Lewis’ favourite design features emerged spontaneously during construction. With different levels between the pool and surrounding ground, a potential challenge became an opportunity.

'Matt and I were onsite one day and came up with these big, wide steps that double as seating,' Lewis says. 'They weren’t part of the original scope, but it solved a problem and added something really special to the design. There were lots of moments throughout the build when ideas evolved naturally and the team was open to refining the design.’

The finished home now unfolds as two distinct yet connected wings. It can operate as one expansive residence or as two self-contained zones, each complete with generous bedrooms, kitchen, bathrooms and laundry. This flexibility of accommodation reflects the broader vision for Ponderosa: a private family retreat that can also host highend group stays from yoga retreats to extended family gatherings.

Architecturally, the connection between old and new is handled with restraint. A timber breezeway with clean lines and natural materials links the bluestone cottage to the contemporary extension, creating a gentle transition between eras.

Uninterrupted flow between interior and exterior spaces was considered essential to the overall design. Large sliding doors open onto a covered alfresco zone, with outdoor kitchen and fireplace leading to a substantial deck and an infinity pool that appears to merge with the valley below. On still days, the water reflects trees and sky; on windy afternoons, the interior offers a sheltered vantage point to watch the landscape shift.

Material selections combine exquisite design, beauty and comfort. Spotted gum hardwood cladding and deluxe concrete floors, from Enhance Polished Concrete, complement the original bluestone >

walls. Neutral interior palettes allow texture, shadow and natural light to take precedence. Sculptural Stairlock staircases crafted from American Oak introduce warmth and tactility. Custom joinery by Intime Kitchens adds precision and refinement without excess. Throughout, the feature elements feel intentional and yet relaxed. A suspended fireplace appears to float within the living space, drawing the eye outward to the view beyond. Window seats are positioned to capture sky and landscape in equal measure and to frame moments to pause.

For Matt, the success of the project came down to trust and collaboration. ‘The outcome exceeded expectations,’ he says. 'That comes from working closely with the client, constantly refining details and making sure every decision serves both design and function.'

Tracey agrees. ‘Matt and his team were exceptional. No matter the issue, they approached it constructively and with complete transparency. They were across every detail and incredibly capable. We’d happily work with them again.’

With the eighteen-month build completed in December 2025, attention has now turned to landscaping, led by local designer Annie Deere Garden Design. The Smith family hope to welcome guests to Ponderosa in spring 2026, once the grounds have had time to establish and soften around the new structures.

Much like the kestrels that hover above its paddocks, the future of Ponderosa feels perfectly at home on the Fleurieu, yet open to the horizon beyond.

The

MARCH

Painting Port Willunga

The jetty poles at Port Willunga have long captured the imagination. The weathered remnants of the second jetty, built in the 1860s and ultimately claimed by crashing waves and relentless tides, are now among the most photographed scenes in the region. Their allure is heightened by Port Willunga’s epic sunsets and glowing skies, which silhouette the poles against dramatic coastal cliffs, creating images that have become emblematic of the state.

The jetty remnants are also the subject of countless paintings, created from the late nineteenth century and continuing to the present day. A selection of these works was featured in Painting Port Willunga, a survey exhibition showcasing a range of artists, recently held at Waverley Park Homestead in Willunga.

We met National Trust volunteer Dr Mark Staniforth to discuss the exhibition and the broader role of the National Trust – an often takenfor-granted yet essential organisation formed to protect both natural and cultural heritage.

‘On the natural side, we manage around thirty-six Trust-owned conservation areas in South Australia,’ Mark explains. ‘These are usually small but significant parcels of land, protected because of specific flora, fauna or historical reasons. We work alongside volunteer groups and other conservation bodies – often in parallel rather than under government structures.’

Crucially, the Trust’s independence allows it to advocate openly. As Mark says, ‘That independence is critical; taking government money would limit our ability to lobby on heritage and environmental issues.’

On the cultural side, the Trust protects historic buildings, sites and museums. In Willunga, the local group has actively and effectively lobbied to protect key elements and buildings within the historic township. Waverley Park Homestead, which had hosted local art groups for decades, was closed by the council in 2016 and used as storage.

‘We spent years lobbying to have it reopened and repurposed. Eventually, with support from elected members, we gained access – after cleaning it ourselves and resolving infrastructure issues,’ says Mark. When the Trust decided to run the space as a gallery it owned only eight artworks. Today, the gallery relies heavily on loans from artists and private collectors, including Trust members: ‘Borrowing art is essential; without it, the gallery couldn’t operate,' says Mark. >

Case in point – Painting Port Willunga drew on works from more than eight art collectors and even included loans from the National Gallery – a testament to the volunteers’ tenacity, expertise, knowledge and passion.

Port Willunga has held artistic significance since the 1880s, beginning with the wreck of the Star of Greece. The dramatic disaster attracted major artists, who captured both the wreck and the jetty in their work. Over time, the remaining jetty pylons themselves became iconic, inspiring photographers and painters alike since the structure largely collapsed around 1915. While visually striking, the site is physically harsh: the original jetty, built in the 1850s, lasted less than a decade, destroyed by ferocious winter swells. The second jetty, constructed in 1868, suffered severe damage by 1915, leaving only remnants. Even today, modern jetties would struggle to withstand such relentless conditions.

Key heritage elements of Port Willunga include the Star of Greece shipwreck, the jetty pylons, the limestone cliffs, and two major heritage buildings – the state-listed Seaview Hotel, still standing, and the Pier Hotel, also known as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, now in ruins. The path down to the jetty, built in 1868, allowed horse-drawn carts

carrying slate, wheat and flour to reach the shore. All of these sites are reflected in the paintings.

Older works show a functioning jetty and the promenade of men and women walking its length. In contrast, paintings of the Star of Greece wreck are charged with the raw power of nature.

More tranquil scenes – the jetty poles on a mild summer’s evening –offer repose.

The exhibition included works by significant artists such as Ashton Gregory, James Ashton, Wilfred Murphy, George Frederick Gregory junior, Kathleen Sauerbier, Horace Trenerry –  deeply influenced by Sauerbier and a major modernist – and Ivor Hele, a five-time Archibald Prize winner. Later and contemporary artists, some well known and others less recognised, were also included to show the continuity of artistic engagement with this place.

Mark is clear on the intent of these exhibitions: ‘Our exhibitions must be locally relevant. Retrospectives include broader work, but the artist must have a strong connection to the region. We don’t exhibit unrelated landscapes simply because they’re good paintings. Place really matters!’

SeaLink five-day gourmet explorer self-drive package

Having travelled to Kangaroo Island on numerous occasions, I still look forward to what I consider a quintessential KI road-trip moment. Just after disembarking at Penneshaw from the Sealink ferry, and only a few kilometres in, we reach the mallee arbors along Hog Bay Road, and that’s when I know we’ve truly arrived. >

Dappled light filters through the branches of old, grey trees, weathered and shaped by wind and time, arching over the road like a gentle, welcoming embrace.

On this visit, we were fortunate to road-test the 5-Day Gourmet Explorer Self-Drive Package, one of the many experiences on offer from SeaLink. While gourmet highlights anchor the itinerary, the

package leaves ample room for spontaneity. You can extend to a long lunch, add an extra cellar door, or simply amble along the scenic route. While most of KI’s major roads are now sealed, the temptation to explore further afield remained irresistible, made easy thanks to our brand-new Mitsubishi MV Triton GLX-R, courtesy of Fleurieu Motor Group.

The beauty of SeaLink’s self-drive packages lies in their balance of structure and freedom. Each offers a unique itinerary, yet the comfort of travelling in your own car (or with an optional car-hire inclusion), allows the journey to unfold at your own pace. It’s an invitation to pause for wildlife sightings, linger at scenic lookouts, or wander down a side road that leads to a secluded beach.

Two new state-of-the-art ferries – Wanggami and Ruwi – are set to make their maiden voyages for Sealink in mid 2026. So, with the increased capacity, comfort and convenience, there’s never been a better time to discover Kangaroo Island’s enduring beauty for yourself.

Special thanks to our talented friends Steve Bell and Rossy Reeves for being our models for the tour. >

Sealink 5-Day Gourmet Explorer Self-Drive Package includes

• Return SeaLink ferry travel to Penneshaw, including vehicle up to and including five metres in length

• Four nights' accommodation with full buffet breakfast at the Ozone Hotel, Kingscote

• Bottle of Kangaroo Island wine on arrival

• Dinner voucher to use at Parsons Restaurant (bookings required)

• Picnic basket for two including sandwiches, cake, fruit and juice

• Premium gin tasting experience at Kangaroo Island Spirits

• Shared platter lunch and wine tasting at Dudley Wines

• HIRE CAR OPTION INCLUDES: return coach transfers to Cape Jervis and six days’ car hire from Penneshaw (Group S Standard Auto).

Fleurieu Biennale Art Prize

Words by Team FLM.

From its inception in 1998, the Fleurieu Biennale Art Prize has stood as one of the premier art prizes in Australia. An example of history and modernity – having been won by distinguished artists such as inaugural winner Robert Hannaford – the event has been reinvigorated and revamped.

What was previously a single exhibition will this year unfold as a month of art experiences. From 5 June to 5 July, discover numerous examples of the high standard of Australian art on display.

The Fleurieu Biennale Art Prize will remain as the seminal event and centrepiece of the month with the prestigious prize attracting entries across painting, sculpture and photography. The main prize is $20,000 with $5,000 and $2,500 prizes for the Emerging Artist Award and People’s Choice Award respectively. The 2026 judging panel is as esteemed as the prize itself, composed of judges Tansy Curtin (Art Gallery of SA), Lee-Anne Hall (JamFactory) and Andrew Purvis (Central School of Art). The finalists works will be displayed at the Fleurieu Arthouse in a free exhibition where the artwork can be purchased.

This year the Board has introduced a second exhibition for 2026: Curator’s Choice will be a companion exhibition to the Biennale Art Prize. In 2024 alone, almost 400 artists entered the Biennale Art Prize, with just 40 selected as finalists. Much like the Salon des

Refusés for the Archibald Prize, the Curator’s Choice exhibition has been conceived in response to the overwhelming number of outstanding entries received for the main award and giving more artists an opportunity to exhibit. The exhibition will be held at the Visitor Information Centre, with free entry and works available for acquisition.

As well as the traditional exhibition experience, this year’s proceedings include a series of artist talks and masterclasses.

Throughout June these small, high-quality, ticketed experiences – featuring drawcard artists, will serve as your opportunity to dive head first into the creative stream created by the Fleurieu Biennale Art Prize. There will also be a large community event called ‘The Winebox Project’. School students, nursing home residents, community members, cellar door visitors, artists (both amateur and professional) – basically anyone willing to is welcome to take part. A true community event. The intention is that the humble wine box will serve as a ‘canvas’ for creativity. The wine box was chosen because it is ubiquitous in our district – and so makes ‘art making’ accessible for everyone. This project will be delivered in partnership with the Good Bank Gallery and the fruits of the project (increasing stacks of paintings, drawings etc on wine boxes) will be exhibited in the Good Bank Gallery throughout the month of June.

In 2026, the Fleurieu Biennale Art Prize will expand beyond an exhibition to become a living, breathing festival of art – one that belongs to its artists, its audience and its place.

Designed for living

‘A house in fact is a metaphysical instrument, a mythical tool with which we try to

introduce

a

reflection

of eternity

into our momentary existence.’ Juhani Pallasmaa, Finnish architect.

On the hunt for ideas for their kitchen and living room renovation, homeowners Tim and Lisa attended a design day at German hardware manufacturer Blum. As luck would have it, Nathan Wundersitz of SpaceCraft was one of the speakers.

Tim and Lisa had seen examples of SpaceCraft’s work in a mid-century modern style and knew they wanted that same aesthetic for the renovation. Add SpaceCraft’s forte in built-in furniture – a modernist design must – and they knew they had found their match.

Their original kitchen was small with a meal area, while the living room was an add-on built shortly after the house was constructed. There was absolutely no connection between the spaces. Due to tight quarters, cooking had become a one-person affair.

Tim and Lisa’s brief to SpaceCraft was to redesign the kitchen, meals and living areas to create an expanded space that could >

be shared, one that would express their passions for cooking, entertaining loved ones, sharing cocktails, and listening to music (think vinyl). In keeping with SpaceCraft’s ethos, the design had to marry beauty with liveability.

The result is an open plan area that reflects how the family lives and blends seamlessly with the rest of the home, creating a flow for everyday life while exuding the warmth and precision of mid-century modern design.

It also incorporates, as per the design brief, the treasured pieces that Tim and Lisa have collected, such as a series of blown-glass pieces from Melbourne artist Amanda Dziedzic, the couple’s Kai Kristiansen bookshelf, and an existing sideboard.

Light now spills in from the large corner windows and, in softer form, falls diffused from the white globe pendants over the peninsula that serves as preparation area, eating area and delineation between the kitchen and the living space.

The intentionality of the material choices creates a vivid interplay of light, texture and design. Natural textures blend with materials in geometric shapes. The rhythmic curvature of the benchtops creates a striking juxtaposition with the sharp, vertical lines of the kitchen tilework.

The Tasmanian stained, oak cabinets and the bespoke cats-eye timber handles, rounded yet raw, match existing mid-century modern furniture. Palest grey Kit Kat tiles add colour, texture and vertical lines, contrasting with the rich warmth of the timber.

The pink quartzite benchtops are durable and, with their soft hues and swirling patterns, add the fluidity of nature to the overall design. The quartzite was a particular commitment by Tim and Lisa. The stone was bought from interstate and the couple had to purchase other stone slabs for travel protection.

A project five years in the making, the final design is the product of iterations and ideas, resolutions and rectification. Each decision flowed into a new idea in a graceful dance: the open plan helped the design of the wet bar, while facilitating a concealed ice maker; custom-built speakers were incorporated into the joinery wall along with hidden storage; organic curves encourage free-flowing movement and conversation.

Key to the process was the collaboration and friendship between client and designer. According to Nathan, these are of the utmost importance to SpaceCraft. ‘Trust and relationship, right from the design phase, through planning and throughout the building phase, are critical to creating beautiful spaces and tailored outcomes,’ he says.

On some occasions problems needed to be solved onsite with the solutions turning out better than the original plans. These changes and the cooperation involved have drastically changed the way Tim and Lisa interact with and live in their home.

They had wanted a spot to sit and face each other, to talk and play games and through intentionality and design – and with the help of SpaceCraft – they have found it. A once disjointed collection of >

rooms is now the setting for board game nights as well as cocktail parties, an easygoing night in the living room listening to music or an afternoon chatting with friends.

They’ve had up to five people cooking at once – the perfect day for them – sharing the kitchen chaos with friends for an evening feast. Being able to cook together has always been the ultimate goal, and realising it now has given them more time together. Tim is also exploring his passions for mixology and alchemy, with space for many gadgets (even a home centrifuge). Things can get pretty serious in the drinks department.

When asked about a single feature of the project that stands out for them, it’s not surprising that they come up with the same answer as the designers: it’s the overhead planter box. It’s an element that may seem inconsequential to some, but this pop of colour and slice of nature is emblematic of the collaboration, innovative design and problem solving that has created this bespoke experience, perfectly tailored to the individual client.

Under the Sun:

three winemakers, one roof, and a new way to drink McLaren Vale

Words by Petra de Mooy. Photography by Ben Macmahon.

In the Old Coach Road precinct of Aldinga where small businesses hum with local energy, a new wine collective is quietly reshaping the cellar door experience.

Under the Sun brings together three of McLaren Vale’s most distinctive winemaking voices – Brad Hickey of Brash Higgins, Uffe Deichmann of Poppelvej, and James Hamilton of Golden Child – not as a blended brand, but as a shared space built on friendship and a belief that collaboration is the future of Australian wine.

The historic township has become a microcosm of creative, community-driven enterprise, and when a new business opens its doors, locals take notice. That community spirit made it a natural home for Under the Sun wine collective. Tucked behind Rustic Thai Cuisine, the collective’s cellar door occupies a beautifully renovated heritage building – now light-filled and welcoming, with its emerging signature: a colourful mural by local mural artist Ella Simpson. Depicting a pastoral landscape, it offers a cheerful welcome to Under the Sun the moment you step inside.

The idea behind the project was simple, and radical in its generosity. Rather than operating individual cellar doors, the three friends chose to pool resources and create a single destination where guests could explore three independent wineries under one roof. Under the Sun purchases all wines directly from its founders, ensuring each winemaker is invested not just in their own success, but in one another’s. If one does well, they all do.

While inspired by other shared tasting rooms in the region, the trio wanted to go further – placing equal emphasis on championing each

other’s wines. Sharing renovation costs and overheads made the project viable; a shared philosophy made it meaningful.

That philosophy is reflected in the glass. Though each winemaker brings a distinct personality and creative path, their approaches sit comfortably side by side: organic vineyards where possible, lowintervention techniques, and a modern McLaren Vale expression that favours freshness, balance and drinkability over big alcohol and heavy oak. The wines speak clearly of place, season and intent.

At Under the Sun, that intent spans the full spectrum – bubbles, whites, rosés, orange wines and reds, alongside the occasional fortified or experimental release. The selection evolves with the seasons, offering exclusive bottlings, cellar gems and wines suited to both casual sipping and deeper exploration.

Visitors are free to choose their own pace. Drop in for a single glass, build a tasting across all three wineries, or spend time with a winemaker when they’re behind the bar. As the sun dips on Friday and Saturday evenings, the space shifts effortlessly from tasting room to relaxed wine bar, guided by atmosphere rather than rules. More than a cellar door, Under the Sun is envisioned as a community hub. With Aldinga’s coastal proximity, creative pulse and loyal local crowd, the collective plans to keep things dynamic through events, collaborations and unexpected takeovers. In a changing South Australian wine landscape, Under the Sun offers a hopeful model – sustainable, collaborative and genuinely fun, all under the one sun.

Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday, 11am-5pm; Friday and Saturday, 11am to late.

See www.underthesunwine.com.

Of darkness and light

An aesthetic of devotion

Pushing through the heavy arcade doors of this former church-turned-home in Middleton, built in 1863 as a Primitive Methodist chapel, I think of those who passed through before me. Farmers praying for rain, mothers for their children. People bargaining with their God in the way only the broken ever do. Ceremonies of marriage, life and death. A thousand months of Sundays spent in reverence as people seek salvation from the elements, and one another.

Today, the lone steeple rises as a silent witness to endurance and solitude, part of a building holding its ground as generations have come and gone, offering shelter from the vastness of the rural Australian landscape. For those sensitive to place, the quiet refuge exerts a subtle, magnetic pull.

For years, Andy and Jan Liebelt made the pilgrimage from their Adelaide Hills home to the southern coastline in search of salty air and wild oceans. Beach first, then a stop at the former church converted into a secondhand bookshop, perched near the railway line on Middleton’s main street.

A family of avid readers, they lingered among the shelves, talking arthouse films, swapping recommendations, buying ten books for forty dollars and congratulating themselves like they’d pulled off a small heist. Over time, they formed a friendship with the eclectic owners. Jokes were made: ‘One day we’ll buy the place when you’re sick of patching it up’. Andy and his wife Jan never believed it would happen. Until one day, it did. The phone rang. The owners were ready to sell and specifically to them.

The church now serves as a second home, a place of reprieve and quiet pause filled with Andy’s collection amassed over forty years, lovingly displayed and curated into the space and creating a layered composition of texture in muted tones. A sensitively visualised >

extension creates an elegant and seamless connection between old and new in a way that lets you believe it has always been this way.

Together, Andy and Jan have created a home not just for their family, but for the sacred relics Andy has brought back from treks across Europe and Scandinavia, from flea markets on the edges of small towns. His travels are less about food and wine and more about cathedrals, bone chapels, ossuaries and churches in the middle of nowhere. The objects he has brought home are of wood, stone and metal, worn smooth by centuries of handling and darkened by candle smoke. Carried through devotion, fear and survival. Once scattered across borders and eras, they are united here, returned to a house of worship where they feel less like artefacts and more like witnesses to the human experience unfolding before them. In close proximity, their presence is cumulative. Histories overlap.

If Andy brings the darkness, Jan brings the light. Neither works without the other. It is a marriage of aesthetics. Jan’s clean lines and luminous spaces allow Andy’s relics to breathe. Light pours in around the suffering, not to erase it but to hold it. A geneticist at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital, Jan tempers Andy’s fireand-brimstone aesthetic with restraint, clarity and air. Where Andy collects, Jan curates. Where his pieces speak of punishment and sacrifice, her design opens space for hope.

The building stands vast and open, unapologetically itself. They have spent more than a decade creating what can only be described as a habitat within the church. An intricately carved white marble Pieta depicting Mary holding Jesus after the crucifixion overlooks the kitchen sink where drama and dishes collide. A late 1700s crucifix stands at the entrance. A forlorn Mary watches >

over the toothbrushes. Original windows are salvaged from rural ruins. Pews have been retained and altars repurposed.

The work to create and restore was slow and deliberate, devotional in its own way, shaped around weekends and holidays. Pauses to let life in. The upstairs library holds the very books they collected on their visits over the years. A sunken leather chair offers an invitation to lose oneself in literary greats. A large banquet table invites friends and family to gather and mull over life's extremes and nuances, in spiritual or worldly discourse.

As Andy and I chat, we are sitting in the courtyard of the new extension looking out over an evergreen garden, sun streaming through the foliage and birds fussing about in the leaf litter,

undeterred by our presence, reminding me of the order of things. It is serene and oh so peaceful.

We talk of the gates of hell and of God. We talk of love and loss. Of Nick Cave and what we’re reading. Of turning bathrooms into places of worship. We digress constantly, and somewhere in the ramble, meaning emerges. I get the sense that for Andy, in his home, his faith is not about doctrine so much as salvation, not the tidy kind but instead the messy human wrestling with unfair suffering. His collection is not about piety; it is about endurance. Worn smooth by centuries of desperate hands, the icons speak of faith standing upright in places where it has every reason to collapse.

'A life of devotion doesn’t omit you from suffering,' Andy tells me quietly.  >

The blessing and joy of two children, Nick and Cate, exist alongside the grief of losing a third child, Claire. The family carries a loss that sits outside language where joy and grief arrive together and refuse to separate.

'There was a time I was really angry with God,' Andy admits. Out of that anger came acceptance, rather than resolution and peace. Faith became less about answers and more about companionship.  'Out of pain and suffering come love and grace and beauty,' Andy says. 'These dark insignia give me a sense of calm. I wake up in the morning and amble down the hallway, I see the crucifixes and light streaming through the stained glass windows. It brings me comfort.'

Retired after thirty-nine years as a Lutheran educator and now a moderator of a Facebook community group with close to 120,000 followers dedicated to the sale, education and restoration of churches nationwide, Andy is entering a new chapter, one that feels less like an ending and more like an offering. He plans to open his

decades-long collection to the public and his community, preserving not just the objects themselves, but the human stories that cling to them. Ever the educator, he plans to open a new brick and mortar store. I sense it has been a long time coming.

'It was never about collecting,' he says. 'It was about looking after things. Making sure they survive.'

Standing in the quiet of the church, nothing feels resolved but instead carefully held. Grief and beauty remain side by side, neither softened nor explained away. Doubt lingers without correction; faith exists without defence. This is not a home that promises salvation as escape but as endurance, a way of staying present in the long, unfinished conversation between suffering and grace. Making space for doubt without demanding certainty.

Here, light does not attempt to defeat darkness, instead it suggests something quietly radical, it reveals what becomes possible when the two are allowed to coexist.

RECEPTION TO YEAR 12

Cardijn College is an R-12 co-educational Catholic school grounded in the Marist tradition and inspired by the dual charisms of our patrons, Joseph Cardijn and St. Marcellin Champagnat. Since our founding in 1984, we have been dedicated to educating and inspiring students in the Southern Vales region of Adelaide. Over four decades, Cardijn has grown to encompass three distinct campuses, each offering specialised educational experiences. www.cardijn.catholic.edu.au

No imports, no apologies

Story by Tyler Jackson Chappell.

For The Salopian Inn’s Alex Marchetti, the idea of stocking only Australian-made beverages began at a wine tasting.

Stephen Pannell of acclaimed wine brand SC Pannell poured wines from the Prōterō, Little Branch and Koomilya vineyards – distinctly Australian expressions – but it was the conversation about the struggles within the broader Australian wine industry that lingered. That discussion planted a seed. From it grew a commitment that would reshape The Salopian Inn’s already lauded drinks offering: local first, eventually local only.

It is, unsurprisingly, no small undertaking. The transition is expected to take around twelve months, allowing the team to responsibly sell through remaining international stock (yes, I wondered what they would do with it too). Already, Champagne has made way for premium Australian sparkling wines such as DAOSA from the Adelaide Hills.

Other substitutions have been more complex. Finding a local alternative to Campari proved challenging, until Alex discovered Marionette, a Victorian producer crafting a bitter curaçao that echoes Campari’s signature bite. Bourbon presented its own hurdles – corn mash is not widely worked with in Australia – but persistence paid off. Melbourne Moonshine’s single cask whiskey emerged as a worthy, delicious replacement.

Threaded through every stage of the process is education. It is both a challenge and a guiding principle. Grant Holmberg of Pluto Spirits, the award-winning organic distillery, articulates it clearly: 'How do we create that knowledge right? You can get all the brands out there doing marketing, but if you have it on the supply side as well

– championing Aussie spirits – you can show the consumer they’re not missing anything by buying Australian.’

For The Salopian Inn team, sharing that knowledge has become one of the most meaningful aspects of the shift. Their clientele is broad: locals, travellers and those deeply embedded in the wine and beverage industries. Where once the bar boasted an expansive international selection, it now offers a carefully curated trove of domestic producers, each with a story worth telling. The exchange is no longer about what’s unavailable, but about what’s been discovered.

The ripple effects extend beyond the venue itself. Local suppliers have felt it too – sometimes with concern. 'Are you okay, Alex?' a few have asked. But the overwhelming response has been support, curiosity and collaboration. Suppliers across the country have suggested thoughtful alternatives, helping to map Australia’s vast and still-evolving drinks landscape.

Crucially, Alex and his business partners Karena Armstrong and Sam Marchetti aren’t interested in gatekeeping. They want others to come along. When asked what advice he’d offer to other venues considering a similar shift, Alex’s answer is simple: 'Go for it. Don’t be afraid. If you’re keen and passionate, and it aligns with the ethics of your business, people will come along for the ride.'

For The Salopian Inn, that ethos is already deeply embedded. 'Everything we do is locally sourced, grown or produced. Knowing your producer is a really important part of our culture. We know the farmers, the growers, the producers,’ says Alex. Not surprising, then, that they grow their own vegetables onsite and love the provenance of low food miles.

A life caring for and working with flora and fauna begins with our agricultural subjects, Dogs in the Quad event, resident farm and foster animals, and EcoCentre – a campus on the banks of Currency Creek, enabling handson learning and threatened species protection, plus vocational training in Horticulture and Conservation & Ecosystem Management.

South Seas Books is an independent bookshop on the Fleurieu’s south coast. South Seas will ignite your imagination.

53 North Terrace, Port Elliot P: 8554 2301 www.southseasbooks.com.au

South Seas Trading offers a selection of vintage art and design pieces · clothing · jewellery · giftware and books in an evolving Arcadian haven. 56 North Terrace, Port Elliot P: 8554 3540

A voice for the wild

Story by Nina Keath.

There is a peaceful strength to Pete Owen, Director of South Australia’s Wilderness Society, one that is evident before we even meet. I discover this as I ring to apologise for being delayed by children who’ve insisted on a swim at Horseshoe Bay where Pete and I are meeting.

Overhearing the call, my daughter offers her assessment: ‘He sounds like a really nice person.’

She’s right. Pete Owen is nice, with an easy kindness and grounded confidence that steadies the space around him, from lobbying politicians and building community movements to patiently accommodating me and my unexpected carload of children. It’s a quality that has helped change the fate of South Australia’s landscapes, rivers and oceans – and it’s that action that has drawn me here today.

With the children successfully dispatched, I find Pete perched contentedly beneath a tree overlooking the sparkling waters of Horseshoe Bay. I sit beside him and he begins to tell me his story. It becomes clear that his confidence is well earned. His kindness too feels gently deliberate – an expression of love put to work.

When Pete was around ten years old, his parents bought a small shack on Hindmarsh Island, right at the mouth of the Murray River.

He recalls with wonder: ‘The shack literally looked straight out at the mouth. The beach was the front yard.’ He describes watching pelicans skim the sky and swimming freely with dolphins, eagle rays and sea lions – and the horror of seeing them injured or even killed.

Then, in the early 1980s, the river mouth closed over completely.  ‘I was a kid and didn’t understand what was happening,’ Pete says. ‘We had an amazing cricket tournament on this huge beach, which is supposed to be the mouth of Australia’s most significant river system. It only dawned on me later what it represented – the unsustainable relationship Australia had with the river, with itself, and with its environment.’

That realisation prompted him to channel his love for this precious place into action.

‘I felt very strongly that I needed to try and get as much of the land and marine ecosystems in this state protected. Just twenty years ago, there was next to no protection of the marine environment and much less protection on the land,’ he says.

After some early attempts at using the courts, he realised they were too slow for the quantum of change required. So Pete pivoted, becoming an environmental advocate lobbying state and federal politicians. Over the twenty years since he started at the Wilderness Society in 2005, Pete and his team have helped secure landmark state and federal reforms. South Australia’s Marine Parks Act alone has taken the state from zero to nineteen marine parks and more than eighty marine sanctuaries.

His related work protecting the Great Australian Bight from oil drilling is worthy of a book.

‘When we started the campaign, people thought we were joking,’ Pete recalls, ‘because the community had been led to believe that these big corporations were more powerful than governments.’

Pete and his collaborators proved otherwise. First BP, then Chevron, and finally Equinor pulled out, each with fulltime lobbyists working to influence state and federal politicians, but no match for a determined community.

Reflecting on this David-and-Goliath battle, Pete says, ‘I think a lot of people don’t realise that protection doesn’t happen unless the community demands it. A major part of our work is empowering people to speak for the environment. It’s critical and it needs to happen now more than ever.’

That belief is at the heart of this year’s Wilderness Society exhibition, Together for Wilderness, running from 1 to 31 May at the Adelaide Botanic Gardens.

‘Many people are losing hope and we want to remind them of what’s possible when we stand together and take control of our future. It’s a celebration of the incredible things that have been achieved over the last twenty years. It’s also about inspiring a shared vision for what comes next,’ says Pete.

‘The flags on top of Parliament House fly in the direction of the most powerful lobby groups. If all parliament hears is “we want more

mining”, then that’s what will happen. It’s up to us, as community, to step up, be a voice for nature, and create the future we want.

‘One of the really important messages is that these things take time. We went from next-to-no marine protection in South Australia to an entire network of marine parks and sanctuaries. It took over a decade, but we got there. That’s an incredible outcome. Now we need to keep pushing. And we know we can if communities stand together.

‘In retrospect, our work sounds clear and strategic, but we were just following our hearts and responding to what emerged. We worked collaboratively, we were motivated by belief and love, and we allowed our intuition to guide us.

‘We hope this exhibition will be a permission slip for many others to re-find their hope and do the same.’

As he speaks, my children emerge from the bay, dripping wet and glowing with sun and salt. Pete smiles good-naturedly at the interruption.

‘That’s why we’re doing this,’ he says, gesturing towards them. ‘We’re working to create the future — the future for these kids.’

Free exhibition: Together for Wilderness, 1 to 31 May, Adelaide Botanic Gardens.

Wilderness Society’s 20th anniversary celebration, 19 April.

• Wills & Estates: Essential guidance for your future.

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Destination Port Elliot

Words by Team FLM.

When most people think of Port Elliot, a few images inevitably spring to mind: Horseshoe Bay, the Port Elliot Bakery, one of the Fleurieu’s best beach towns – bursting into life over summer yet remaining an excellent walking, eating and shopping

A late-morning walk through town means being bathed in resplendent aromas drifting from open doorways.

Coffee in hand, I wander up The Strand and join the coastal walk from Knight’s Beach, where bodyboarders show off their skills on cresting waves. Linger for a while, then follow the headland pathway carved into the hillside, taking in awe-inspiring geological formations with the thunder of waves crashing below. Eventually, you’ll arrive at the iconic Horseshoe Bay, where countless childhood memories have been made, watched over by the soaring Norfolk Pines standing in quiet honour within the Soldiers Memorial Gardens on the cliff above.

The town has a few zones to discover including The Strand, North Terrace, Elliot Street and Factory 9.

Factory 9

The

Joinery Wine Room

The experience of sipping a wine in the same place it’s made remains a special one, and something we perhaps take for granted on the Fleurieu. The Joinery offers a unique take on this pleasure, making you feel as if you can reach right into the cool, fully functioning winery and brush the wooden barrels that house Charlotte Dalton and Cooke Brothers wines. Enjoy wines by the bottle or glass, a selection of beers, spirits and soft drinks, as well as snacks, cheese plates and small bites from local producers – all while sitting inside or out as live music or friendly chat fills the air. thejoinerywineroom.com.au

De Groot Coffee Co

With a cult following and decades of craft behind it, De Groot Coffee Co at Factory 9 in Port Elliot is far more than a great cup of coffee – it’s a South Australian institution. As one of the state’s earliest specialty coffee roasters, De Groot’s helped shape SA’s coffee

destination year round. In reality, Port Elliot is also a nexus for artisans, creatives and people intent on making a positive impact on the community they love. Oh, and coffee – so much coffee – each venue putting its own spin on largely local roasters.

culture long before the boom. Today, the Port Elliot café carries that legacy forward, roasting and brewing on site with trademark consistency and care, while supplying beans to many of the state’s most respected cafés.

For locals, visitors and passers-through, it’s a daily ritual and a natural meeting place – a true community hub where conversation flows as freely as the espresso. Whether you’re grabbing a takeaway or settling in, De Groot’s is perpetually abuzz. degrootcoffeeco.com.au

Art of You

Rebecca Elson, a clinical hypnotherapist and art therapy practitioner, and Mark Twohig, a committed youth worker, musician and artist, are the creative faces behind Art of You. Rebecca’s background in theatre and film – including the Sydney Theatre Company, London’s Royal National Theatre and Opera Australia – helps inform the creative foundation of the studio.

Inspired by the ways people naturally use creativity to regulate and express themselves, Rebecca and Mark opened the doors of Art of You based on the belief that creativity isn’t just art – it’s therapeutic, social and deeply human. By blending art, music and healing practices, the studio offers experiences that support wellbeing that is natural, practical and accessible. Their work spans adults, women’s programs, families, community wellbeing and NDIS services, with occasional children’s holiday workshops. There are painting workshops, drumming, sound baths, or dancing with the lights off.

After years in Alice Springs, London and Sydney, Rebecca and Mark chose the Fleurieu to slow life down and create something meaningful. Port Elliot, with its breathtaking beaches, charming old buildings and unhurried pace, provides the perfect backdrop. Here, Art of You isn’t just a studio – it’s a destination for connection, creativity and wellbeing, inviting locals and visitors to pause, play and discover themselves. artofyou.au >

The ever evolving flow of this little town is nowhere more evident than the warehouses turned vibrant businesses like Gut Feeling, Fleurieu Bike, Small Circle Co-Op and Yeo Haus, the latter a hub for live music, surfboard repair and an afternoon beverage and burger at their new offering, Slim Slow’s.

Slim Slow’s at Yeo

Slim Slow’s is tucked inside the brick facade that houses Yeo Haus, a coastal warehouse in the back blocks of Port Elliot where surfboards are shaped, clothes are designed, and beers come cold. Backed by the same crew who’ve been shaping ideas in town for more than a decade, Slim didn’t build the place – he just moved in when it felt right.

The story is simple: Slim Slow’s is for people who value warmth, time and a space that doesn’t ask too many questions. The cooking matches that ethos – burgers, fries and bar food meant to be savoured slowly or devoured fast. There are no systems, just standards: do it properly, don’t dress it up, and never rush people out the door.

The Fleurieu suits Slim perfectly – unpolished, patient and quietly confident. With its long coastlines, changing seasons, and towns that don’t need to prove themselves, Slim Slow’s exists here because it wouldn’t make sense anywhere else. yeohaus.com

And just as places like Slim Slow’s nourish the social fabric of the town, other long-standing local businesses quietly support the physical wellbeing of locals and visitors and help them fully embrace the Port Elliot lifestyle.

Pt Elliot Physio

Pt Elliot Physio has embraced the Fleurieu’s lifestyle for more than fifteen years, using the natural environment to enhance rehabilitation and wellbeing. Chosen for its coastal charm, tight-knit community, and central spot between Victor Harbor and Goolwa, the clinic caters to a diverse, active population from families enjoying the beach and local sports to retirees seeking tailored physiotherapy.

By building strong relationships and mutual support, Pt Elliot Physio’s team has grown into a welcoming group, making the waiting room feel more like a coffee catch-up than a clinic. Many of the practitioners live close to Port Elliot, embedded in the local community. The clinic also provides local jobs, contributing to the town’s sense of connection, wellbeing and vitality. ptelliotphysio.com.au

The journey through this stunning coastal oasis continues east and west on North Terrace, the main artery of Port Elliot. Both sides of the street are lined with iconic and loved, local businesses. It's not just locals who appreciate these enterprises. Some, like South Seas, are widely heralded by both locals and tourists (and in this case, writers and readers) alike.

South Seas

South Seas Books & Trading is uniquely positioned. The two shops sit adjacent to each other at the North Terrace entrance to the township. South Seas’ original shop was housed in a cosy historic building and now features a striking, architecturally designed

addition by Max Pritchard. The modern, lofty space has been beautifully integrated into the streetscape. Readers – young and old – along with design lovers and literary enthusiasts will find more than one gem here.

Adding to this, owners Mark and Sarah rescued the old police station several years ago. While retaining the original building’s integrity and charm, they have added floor space for a selection of men’s and women’s fashion, giftware and art, craft and design objects including jewellery, paintings, sculpture and ceramics by some of the best South Australians working in those fields. Complementing this are beautiful hard cover coffee table books covering a range of fascinating subjects. southseastrading.com.au / southseasbooks.com.au

Your Beauty Spot

Some businesses are too important to lose, and Your Beauty Spot is one of them. When the original owner decided to move interstate, Alice Smart stepped in to ensure the beloved Port Elliot salon could continue serving the community. Driven by a commitment to >

keeping local businesses alive, she created a place in which you can slow down and reset, with a considered range of treatments including massages, facials, LED light therapy, manicures, pedicures, waxing and spray tans, all using Aveda products.

The intimate space flaunts a relaxed, welcoming atmosphere, with genuine care at the centre of every visit. Built on meaningful connections, knowing each client by name like they are family, it’s a destination where self-care is unhurried and personal. yourbeautyspotsalon.com.au

Jetty Food Store

'Keep it fresh, keep it local'

A familiar fixture of Port Elliot life, Jetty Food Store is entering a thoughtful new chapter under the care of Elijah Cownie and Stephanie Fisher, who became custodians in October 2025.

The Jetty Food Store has been a cornerstone of Port Elliot’s ‘heartbeat’ for nearly two decades. As the business approaches its twenty-year milestone, the young family is honouring what has always made the store special while gently shaping its future. With

their three-year-old son Maximus often underfoot, snacking on blueberries or setting up the kids’ corner, Jetty Food Store feels every bit a lived-in, community-led space.

Part grocer, part café and very much a local hub, the focus is firmly on the Fleurieu Peninsula: seasonal produce sourced directly from farmers, small-batch goods from local makers, and food that celebrates freshness and flavour. Whether you’re refilling a glass milk bottle, gathering ingredients for a generous grazing board or looking for an easy lunch, the experience invites you to slow down, breathe the sea air, and enjoy food that was harvested yesterday.

jettyfoodstore.com.au

Southern Surf and Southern Surf Coffee Van

Family-owned, Southern Surf and the adjoining coffee van reflect a deep commitment to keeping Port Elliot’s small businesses alive and thriving. The surf shop, the second oldest in South Australia, was lovingly revived in early 2024, opening the historic space to light and expanding the range to include local designers, board shapers and coastal essentials.

Outside, Southern Surf Coffee Van has become a much-loved local ritual, serving delicious treats from Frosting and Sprinkles and Dawn Patrol coffee made with Fleurieu Milk are served alongside Tan’s special turmeric lattes and specialty toasties, in a relaxed, sun-filled setting beneath a blooming frangipani tree. With space for kids to play and chooks roaming out back, it captures the warmth and slowpaced charm that keeps people coming back to Port Elliot. southernsurf.com.au / @southernsurfcoffeevan

Local Kitchen Co

Local Kitchen Co was founded in 2019 by Sarsha Harvey, lovingly known as the Chief Eating Officer, who started cooking from her home with one mission: to make nourishing, chef-made meals that genuinely supported people in living better lives.

What began as a small, values-driven food venture has grown into a thriving South Australian business. From ready-to-eat meals and salads to soups and baked goods, every offering prioritises flavour, nutrition and convenience, with personalised service whether instore, online or delivered.

Having strong roots in the Fleurieu Peninsula, opening in Port Elliot was a natural extension, a town where people look out for one another, support local businesses, and value quality over hype. The town perfectly aligns with Local Kitchen Co’s values. At its heart, Local Kitchen Co is built by people who care: chefs, bakers, delivery drivers and support staff all committed to doing things properly.

Being part of Port Elliot isn’t just about opening a store: it’s about becoming part of the town. lkco.com.au

Port Elliot is a location full of surprises that caters to a full spectrum of activities: from a walk through stunning wetlands to a hunt for secondhand treasures. If you can resist the urge to sprint straight towards Freeman Lookout, The Strand boasts some captivating shopping experiences from pre-owned treasure-hunting opportunities to more chic options like Mist.

Mist

Raw. Modern. Timeless.

Located on The Strand for more than a decade, Mist is a cornerstone of the Port Elliot experience. Looking for understated fashion, a >

statement event outfit, stylish homewares or a unique gift for that special someone? If so, Mist is a must-visit for everyone.

The welcoming vibe is matched by the down-to-earth team that makes every visit feel effortless, friendly and enjoyable. With an everevolving curation of boutique finds, you can come back again and again and each time find something exciting and new.  @mist_collective

Looking for a place to stay and linger longer?

Coastal Soul Cottage

Coastal Soul Cottage is a charming, spacious holiday home professionally hosted by Hometime SA. This beautifully restored 1920s stone cottage blends heritage character with modern comfort and sleeps up to eleven guests across four bedrooms. Bright openplan living flows to a covered deck ideal for barbecues, while a fully equipped kitchen, dual lounge areas and outdoor space make it perfect for relaxed family or friends’ escapes close to beaches, cafés and local attractions. stays.hometime.io

7 Boomer Drive

7 Boomer Drive is a spectacular beachfront holiday home ideal for large groups and families. Set right on the esplanade with stunning Southern Ocean views, this luxury property features six bedrooms, five bathrooms, and spacious indoor and outdoor living areas. Guests enjoy modern amenities including a fully equipped kitchen, wifi, air-conditioning, games room and ocean-facing balconies just steps from Boomer and Knights Beaches. Great for a memorable seaside stay.

harrisholidayrentals.guestybookings.com

If this richness of Port Elliot were not enough, explore the many delicious food outlets just a short stroll along the streets: multiple pub food options, a string of cafes each with their own vibe and menu, and of course the landmark Port Elliot Bakery. The bakery’s famous donut and pie of the month attract local and out-of-towners every turn of the moon. Port Elliot – it’s a marvelous slice of the Fleurieu.

Community as ecosystem

Ten years of Fleurieu Future Leaders

Words by Petra de Mooy.

In 2018, I joined the second cohort of the Fleurieu Future Leaders Program (FFLP). During that six-month period, something shifted in me. I learned to trust my instincts while asking deeper, more courageous questions.

The program asks a lot of us as individuals: how are you functioning within the various structures of your life – work, family, community? And more broadly how are we collectively shaping the region as a whole. Together, we explored what the Fleurieu could become in ten, twenty, thirty years and beyond. Bringing together people across generations and professions created more than a program; it built a living, breathing community. Nearly a decade on, the interconnected whole has taken root across the region, with roots that reach far and wide.

In 2021, previous participant Matt Newlands was listening to an ebook about forests. The author talked about how forests functioned and what made them healthy. Matt was struck by how a forest ecosystem aligned with how humans function.

A forest works like a human body – interconnected systems, circulation, vulnerability. Humans collectively mirror this: individuals

as trees, communities as ecosystems. These networks exist because life is interdependent – each organism relies on others and its environment to survive, adapt and maintain balance.  He ruminated on the idea and presented it as a keynote speaker to the 2021 FFLP. The analogy has become emblematic of the program and its impact – as well as Matt’s approach to life.

Matt – a counsellor and mental health advocate – had participated in the leaders program in 2017, its inaugural year.

His final presentation for that six-month program struck a chord. He was raw, willing to share his story and be authentically himself. He shared that he’d suffered from PTSD after spending ten years in the police force. He’d experienced severe depression and, in his darkest moment, contemplated suicide, but he had had just enough introspection to lift himself out a bit.

He’d made steps towards finding support via a men’s group and enrolled in the first FFLP on the advice of Charles Manning, cofounder of the program.

The program and the presentation opened something up for him. He learned he needed a solid community around him, one that would support his vulnerability and accept him for who he was. The program was the catalyst to change his direction in life. If he was having these battles, he realised, there must be countless other first

responders and armed force members who felt the same way. And so for the past decade, Matt has built up his consultancy as a speaker and facilitator, including a yearly speaking engagement at FFLP, and as an ambassador for R U OK?.

When Matt introduced the forest metaphor in his 2021 speech at the FFLP, exploring how the program represented a growing forest, the group loved it. Now the program organisers use it as a vivid metaphor for what the network represents.

The first twenty participants from 2017 now form part of a onehundred-and-eighty-plus strong community.

When Charles and Janice Manning, behavioural scientists and coowners of Face the World, launched the program – they had no idea how great its impact would be.

Janice has co-ordinated the program from its inception. She has watched over the forest and observed its growth. For her, the journey is a shared, immersive one in which participants and facilitators grow together.

The reward is witnessing relationships form – friendships, collaboration and peer support that ease the loneliness of leadership, especially for sole operators. Seeing people connect despite differences, lean on each other for advice or camaraderie, and move through the full spectrum of emotion – from tears to frustration to achieving goals.

Charles concurs and adds: ‘Alumni have shared that the program not only teaches them to navigate challenges with greater awareness and strategy, but also sparks unexpected confidence to pursue bold steps, from starting businesses to running for office.

‘Part of this impact comes from the diversity of the participants –bringing together a competitive mix of genders, ages, industries and mindsets across the Fleurieu, which pushes participants to challenge their thinking and learn from perspectives they wouldn’t encounter in single-industry programs.’

Over the years, participants have included people from national parks, hospitality, wine businesses, aged care, local government, state government, corporate life and family businesses. They have been self-employed, unemployed, single mums, teachers, scientists, engineers, labourers, artists and concreters – and more.

Ron Logan, local aviation enthusiast and recent Chair of Bendigo Community Fleurieu Bank, has been cheerleading the program from the outset. With the bank as a key sponsor since its inception, he cannot say enough about the positive outcomes and the reasons the bank will continue to support it for years to come. This commitment also aligns with the bank’s mission to reinvest profits back into the community.

The program’s strong foundation, backed by champions such as Ron, allows participants to develop not just as leaders, but as contributors to the wider community. >

Jacob Messenger is the Global ASLT Manager at SMR Automotive. The program gave him time to get some perspective on his role: ‘When I joined Fleurieu Future Leaders, I was firefighting operational challenges rather than stepping back to reflect or strategise. It gave me structured time to introspect, build confidence, and connect my personal motivation with my work, empowering me to leverage the talent around me, pursue ambitious projects, and make a lasting impact on both the local and global engineering community.’

Jenni Mitton, a 2018 participant, recently stepped up as Labor candidate for Mawson in the upcoming state election. When the opportunity came up to put her hat in the ring she hesitated but then asked, ‘Why not me?’ Jenni points out: ‘At the heart of it, it's not about making a great leader in Jenni Mitton or an individual person. It's being there for the benefit of the community.’

Marissa Harvey is a sixth generation local involved in the grapegrowing industry. Her 2022 participation in the program was transformative. It sharpened her leadership and mentoring skills and opened doors to significant roles, including board and chair positions at the Bendigo Community Fleurieu Bank. It gave her the confidence to guide others, navigate complex challenges, and help shape the next generation of leaders in her industry and the region. Stories like hers show how the program is cultivating the leaders who will guide its future.

Founders Charles and Janice Manning are now beginning the path towards succession. They feel confident they have some excellent crew stepping in to take the reins and continue with strong, steady and dependable leadership through an elected board.

Danny Horsfall is the director of Mid Coast Constructions, a leaders program alumnus, and now chair of the board. His main takeaway from the program was how it helped him with his patience – to slow down and consider, a skill he’ll apply to the program’s transition. 'Just the ability to pause and take time to think internally and then react. Prior to that, I was probably more reactive. So you think internally and then come up with a positive answer,’ he says. ‘I think those interactions have changed my life whether it be with my kids, wife, friends or professional relationships.’

Board member Mark Koen of Restored Connection is also a program alumnus. He wasn’t sure what he would learn but has been blown away by the seeds it has planted in the community and for himself. Mark had been working in wellbeing at a high school but after Future Leaders he started his own business as a facilitator specialising in youth, working with the Yankalilla, Victor Harbor and Onkaparinga councils.

Mark has been facilitating the program’s transition. He wants to represent all the energy and hard work that Charles and Janice have put in. As he says, ‘It’s critical to capture the essence of that and to take that forward. It may change shape a little bit, but it's a sound, solid, proven program that we'd love to see go for twenty, thirty, forty years and more.’

Board member and 2025 alumnus Debbie Constable is also the CEO of Ted X Victor Harbor which ran successfully for the first time in 2025. She says that, after decades in leadership and training, the FFLP stood out for its raw vulnerability and its focus on discovering the person first, rather than just producing a ‘good manager’. Entering at a crossroads in her life, the experience helped her confront imposter syndrome, reconnect with her purpose, and embrace the qualities others already saw in her.

Keynote speaker, facilitator and coach Dan Aubin of Daring Humans participated in 2019. A defining impact has been the creation of a genuine challenge network – people respectfully pushing each other beyond comfort rather than simply cheerleading. That culture of courageous feedback has led to tangible outcomes, from successful community projects to individuals stepping into bold life transitions. As a facilitator at Future Leaders, Dan is a key part of the succession plan. ‘Succession isn’t about replacing the founders but about holding the best of what exists while gradually finding our own voice within it,’ he says.

I am anticipating that evolution of voice, the ongoing growth and reach of that forest ecosystem.

If you are looking to deepen your roots and clear space for new perspectives. The program will crack open a part of you that comfort never could.

TWO YEARS IN A ROW.

For the love of local

Story by Esther Thorn.

Unlike most big business acquisitions, the news wasn’t broken over a boardroom table or lawyer’s desk. Instead, Melanie and Adam McKibbin rolled their car up next to their twin teenage daughters, who were walking home from school, wound down the window and said, ‘We just bought Shifty Lizard.’ The girls’ screams of delight echoed through the back streets of Willunga.

It was Halloween, and the much-loved microbrewery and taphouse on Willunga’s High Street had been closed for a couple of months. Its absence had left a noticeable gap in the town’s main street, and a hole in the hearts of many locals.

‘We were devastated when it closed,’ Mel tells me as we sit together in the empty taphouse. It is early in the day. Stools are still perched

upside down on tables in the front of the house, while the kitchen behind us hums with activity as Adam and the staff prepare for a busy night ahead.

It is only days since the Tour Down Under rolled through town, and there is still a thrum in the warm air. It is the lingering energy that follows the spinning of bike tyres and the mass movement of people, like a flock of birds landing briefly in small South Australian towns and infusing them with life for days after they have gone. Mel proudly gestures to the award sitting on the front counter, Best Dressed Commercial Property for the Tour. ‘It’s been a whirlwind since we took over,’ she says. ‘We’ve barely stopped to breathe, but it feels like we’re finding our rhythm now and settling into a new normal.’

I ask Mel to take me back to the beginning. How did a couple originally from Sydney, with no hospitality experience, find themselves owning a brewery and taphouse on the Fleurieu Peninsula?

‘We had friends who’d moved to Willunga and we just loved it down here,’ she says. ‘It was 2021 and COVID had shown us we could work remotely, so we thought, why not?’

They packed up their then primary school-aged daughters, and moved into a rental in McLaren Vale. Around seven months later, they bought a property just around the corner from Shifty Lizard, a move that would prove serendipitous.

Friday night dinners at ‘Shifty’ quickly became a standing fixture on the family calendar. ‘It got to the point where you had to book two weeks in advance, so we had a permanent booking,’ Mel laughs. So, when the family heard their local was closing, they were devastated. And they were not alone. The news rippled through the town, and High Street felt strangely quiet without people gathered beneath the market umbrellas out the front of Shifty.

‘Our girls said, “Why don’t we buy it?”,’ Mel says. ‘I guess it planted a seed. We thought, maybe we could.’

They had no hospitality background. Mel and Adam had previously owned a gym in Sydney and Mel had worked for many years as a business coach alongside other careers. Then, in a twist of fate, both found themselves out of work, but in a financial position that made buying Shifty Lizard a genuine possibility.

‘We only told a few people at first, but the news spread quickly,’ Mel says. ‘The biggest reaction is just how happy people are that Shifty’s open again. It’s such a loved place.’

Shifty Lizard officially reopened at the beginning of January, and already there have been some positive changes. An undercover alfresco area has been added, and there are plans for limitededition beers, winter stouts and ginger beer. Locals’ night runs on Thursdays, Fridays are ninety-nine per cent wing nights, and Saturdays offer burgers and a pint.

Still, Mel and Adam are conscious that Shifty already stands firmly on its own feet. Their approach is about gentle evolution, not reinvention.

‘Beer is such a friendly, unpretentious drink,’ Mel explains. ‘It’s working class, and that’s exactly what we are – easygoing, welcoming and up for a laugh. That’s what Shifty Lizard has always been about.’

Victa Cinema

Nostalgia gives rise to a myriad of emotions, among them longing, joy and a rose-coloured hankering for a bygone era. The draw is so magnetic that in modern times it has been commodified – bundled up and repackaged in the form of TV shows and consumer products. With this commercialisation of our own memories, sources of genuine nostalgia are cause for celebration.

Few local establishments trigger a sense of yearning like the Victa Cinema. It stands as one of the first examples of a ‘talkies’ era cinema and has played host to countless precious snapshots in time ever since: family outings, holiday treats, first dates followed by those shaky, awkward kisses, or awe at the majesty of a great film.

A once relished social event, the idea of ‘going to the movies’ has waxed and waned in popularity. The invention and ubiquitous spread of television were the first blows to cinema’s popularity in the sixties (although the boom of seventies’ summer blockbusters picked it up from the mat). Now, streaming services and the internet are dominating people's attention and shepherding them into a more isolated experience of viewing.

Through all of this the Victa Cinema has championed the communal experience of watching a movie in a theatre.  >

The cinema was purpose-built in 1923 after screenings outgrew the Victor Harbor Institute Hall. A fire tragically destroyed the theatre in January 1934, yet – in a show of resilience and determination – the cinema was rebuilt and opened on the same site in September of the same year. A major milestone was when the Stock family took ownership in the mid nineties. In a run-down state but not beyond disrepair, they lovingly restored the cinema to its former glory and converted it from a single screen to two screens, one upstairs and one downstairs.

While often referred to as Art Deco, Jarrad Jenkins, who coordinates the cinema, points out the building is more aligned with Interwar and Streamlined architecture, which is less ornate than true Art Deco. Clean lines, horizontal emphasis, stunning terrazzo in the entrance and the use of contrasting materials create both majesty and comfort.

Changes wrought by some loving caretakers since the cinema’s construction, such as air conditioning, seating upgrades and the conversion from 35mm film to digital technology, have helped modernise the building while retaining its original character. Local historian Chris Burns believes it is one of the most intact examples of a cinema of the interwar era, resulting in the building’s 2023 listing on the state heritage register.

The cinema’s 'heart of main street’ moniker is well deserved. It is situated in the middle of Victor Harbor’s main street, Ocean Street. After being purchased by the Victor Harbor City Council in 2020,

the cinema has been at the heart of the community in other ways. Alongside its cinematic screenings, it now functions as a multi-use cultural space with diverse year-round events. It has welcomed live performances and played host to Q&A events, school programs, festivals, community workshops, comedy shows, a ‘live podcast’ true crime event, live music and TEDxVictor Harbor talks.

The building is part of the three pillars of the council's Arts & Culture Precinct, alongside the Coral Street Art Space and the Town Hall. As such, it is a vital part of Victor Harbor’s cultural infrastructure, set to foster local cultural and social events by supporting artists, film societies, schools, First Nations communities and emerging creatives. It will be a hub for residents and visitors alike.

Planned upgrades and restorations are in the works, but don’t fret, the state heritage values of the venue and façade – including the reinstatement of original doors – will remain at the forefront of it all. And film will remain the building’s lifeblood with screening of cult classics, Christmas movies and the best contemporary features, as well hosting the Alliance Francaise French Film Festival.

As the Victa Cinema transitions into a cohesive element of the Arts & Culture Precinct, we remember that it has been a physical and cultural anchor for the town for more than a century. It is home to young love, first jobs, friend get-togethers and family memories. A stunning Art Deco(esque) monument to local pride, resilience and creativity, the cinema over the next one-hundred years will offer future generations their own genuine experiences of nostalgia.

From rags to fashion riches

Recycled Runway 23 May 2026

Recycled Runway McLaren Vale celebrates creativity, community and conscious fashion. Founded by Megan Caldersmith, owner of She Sews, the initiative emerged from her growing awareness of the impact of fast fashion.

The event takes a positive approach, bringing awareness to the fact that hundreds of thousands of tonnes of clothing are sent to landfill in Australia each year. As a designer and alteration specialist, Megan sees this waste firsthand in barely worn and cheaply made garments.

Runway contributors – including sewers, designers, students and artists – receive five preloved garments and are asked to transform them into runway-ready outfits. In its first year, four-hundred

garments were saved. Since then, more than two-thousand pieces have been given new life.

Now in its third year, the event will move to Tatachilla Estate, expanding its audience while inspiring its participants to tackle fast fashion through thrifting, upcycling and mindful purchasing. In 2025, Megan shared Runway's message through a TEDx talk, Why Five Garments Matter, which can be viewed online.

Jane Olds, a costume design graduate, explores feminine, embellished designs in her featured design. Inspired by the phoenix, she has crafted a dramatic outfit from knitted jumpers and tulle. The garment represents more than fifty hours of hand cutting fabric feathers, stitching embroidery and fraying fabric to create trims. (Who needs sleep right?). The process taught her to balance ambition with practicality and to embrace ‘done over perfect’. Jane is proud of achieving so much while working fulltime as a tailor and raising a family, turning the challenge into a celebration of skill, creativity and resourcefulness.  >

Sasha Macgill-Rankin, a seamstress and TAFE and Flinders uni graduate, has used recycled fabrics in her playful design, a flowing outfit incorporating embroidery and appliqué that experiments with textures and colours outside of her comfort zone. Pushing herself to innovate, Sasha maximised every scrap and minimised

waste. Participating in Recycled Runway for two years, she values its creativity and sustainability, the welcoming and supportive community, and the chance to share her work. Her win in the student category for the 2025 show highlights the joy of creative experimentation and learning through sustainable fashion processes.

Laura Day, a tailor and kiltmaker, joined the challenge to test her skills without the cost of traditional competitions. Here, she experiments with smocking to create a denim and tulle skirt, carefully repurposing every fabric scrap. Balancing ambition with practicality, Laura learned to innovate under constraints. The

experience reinforced her commitment to thrift, quality and being mindful about every stage in the garment process. Laura won the first Recycled Runway and was highly commended in 2025. Continuing to participate has affirmed her passion for creative problem-solving and sustainable design. >

Janet and Isobel Brodie

Janet worked with a surprise bag of recycled fabrics to transform denim, corduroy, linen and cotton into a smocked, patchworked top, skirt and bag. Her daughter Isobel models the ensemble with flair. Janet learnt honeycomb smocking and creative problem-solving,

turning fabric challenges into wearable art. For both mother and daughter, Recycled Runway celebrates sharing of skills, personal expression and sustainable fashion. They’re proud of the finished outfit and of contributing to the community’s creative and ecoconscious spirit.

Natalie Rickers and a group of close friends joined Recycled Runway during a busy, challenging time in their lives. With little sewing experience, they relied on one skilled sewer and a lot of embracing laughter and creativity. Their Vivienne Westwood-inspired outfit is a fun, layered and colourfully embellished outfit. For them,

the project became more than fashion – it was joy, connection and playful self-expression. Walking the runway and creating together reminded them to celebrate each other and find creativity amid life’s demands, turning discarded materials into a source of healing and shared triumph.

The body's quiet powerhouse

Words by Sarah Wade.

As a clinical nutritionist working closely with clients, I meet people every day who are conscious of their health yet still feel unwell and still feel disconnected from their bodies. They’re tired, foggy, gaining weight or simply not themselves anymore, despite being told everything looks 'fine'.

My passion for my work as a nutritionist was shaped by my own health journey, one that showed me how powerful integrative and holistic approaches can be when the body is supported properly, not just in crisis, but long before things fall apart.

I deeply respect the role of western medicine: it saves lives every day. However, in practice, I often see crucial steps of preventative health – early support, education and foundational care – overlooked. The result can be small imbalances that grow into bigger health crashes that leave people feeling overwhelmed and prevent them from enjoying the things they once did.

But with the right (and early) investigations, alongside targeted diet and lifestyle strategies, balance can often be restored and symptoms can improve.

Thyroid health is one area which is frequently neglected. It is a significantly underrated driver of many subtle, ongoing health issues.  The thyroid releases hormones that set the pace of your entire body, from how efficiently you make energy, to how warm you feel, how steady your mood is, and how easily weight shifts. These hormones also influence heart rate, breathing, cholesterol and menstrual cycles, helping explain why thyroid dysfunction can create a collection of seemingly unrelated symptoms, ranging from brain fog and fatigue to weight gain, low mood and difficulty regulating body temperature. This small, butterfly-shaped gland at the base of the neck affects both men and women. However, women are far more vulnerable due to hormonal fluctuations, pregnancy, perimenopause, menopause and higher rates of autoimmune conditions.

Many people who come to my clinic have already done the standard GP check-ups. Blood tests have been run and results reviewed, yet

they’re left with no clear answers as to why they 'just don’t feel like themselves' anymore. Often, only one thyroid marker is assessed. While useful, this reflects a signal from the brain, not how thyroid hormones are actually behaving in the body.

When we take the time to review results through a more optimal lens, ask symptom-based questions, and look at stress, sleep, nourishment and widespread inflammation, patterns often emerge that point towards thyroid dysfunction and the need for deeper investigation.

One recent client, Lucy*, completed more comprehensive thyroid testing, which revealed significantly elevated autoimmune antibodies, meaning her immune system was under stress and mistakenly attacking her own thyroid. This creates ongoing inflammation and gradually reduces the thyroid’s ability to work properly. With a shortterm diet and lifestyle plan focused on reducing triggers and calming inflammation, her quality of life improved dramatically.

This is where a holistic approach matters. Thyroid health isn’t just about hormones on paper, it’s about the environment those hormones are working in. A range of calming and restorative practices such as good nutrition, reduced stress load, adequate sleep, activities that spark joy, and gentle movement can all influence how well the thyroid can function.

Where to start? Supporting your thyroid begins with adequate nourishment, reducing chronic stress, and calming inflammation. Regularly including whole foods such as seafood, eggs, quality meat and poultry, leafy greens, legumes, nuts, seeds and healthy fats provides the building blocks the thyroid relies on. From there, personalised strategies for each individual can make a meaningful difference. You can get help with those strategies from a nutritionist and other practitioners such as naturopaths, herbalists, homeopaths and acupuncturists, to name a few.

Perhaps the best place to start is with knowledge. When you understand how your body works, you have choice and agency over your health. And with a holistic approach to wellbeing, with support from professionals who take this approach, you are more likely to feel healthy and can again be at home in your body.

Indulge in rejuvenating massages and revitalising facials designed to refresh your skin and calm your body and mind. Enjoy expert waxing and professional tanning for a flawless finish, plus a full range of nail treatments to keep your hands and feet perfectly polished.

Shop 4/38 North Terrace

Port Elliot

(08) 8554 2880 0432 375 653

Exhibitions, film, and performance in the heart of Victor Harbor.

Spray and spirit:

Words by Emma Craggs.

There’s an unmistakable optimism in each of Mike Sander’s works – a vibrancy that feels hopeful and confident, yet reflective of his modest and kind heart.

Whether realised as a large-scale mural spanning the face of a building, enlivening a private home or distilled on an intimate canvas, Mike invites connection with every pass of the can: to colour, to character and to place.

Born and raised in the leafy contours of Onkaparinga Hills and now based in Seaford Meadows, Mike paints from a place of community and creative curiosity that mirrors the spirit of our region. These qualities have seen his work recognised locally, across South

Australia and nationally, including for fundraising initiatives such as Fight MND.

Mike’s career began with a teenage appreciation of street art, was shaped by formal study, then refined by disciplined practice. ‘I fell in love with art at a very young age,’ he recalls.

From sketchbooks in high school to a graphic design degree at UniSA, his early pursuits evolved naturally into something bigger, something that now colours entire buildings and invites passers-by to join in on the narrative. Curious and enthusiastic, Mike’s early experiments with spray paint began a decade ago.

‘The initial two to three years were very raw and not well polished,’ he laughs, candid about his evolution. Over time, aided by study, self-reflection and mentorship from local artists including good >

friend Morris Green, his technical skill and command of realism blossomed. What began as a passion has become precision, without losing its original impulsive joy.

The fruits of that growth are visible across the Fleurieu and greater South Australia. Among his most meaningful commissions is his work with Fight MND, where he was invited to create a portrait of Neale Daniher. Auctioned at the 2022 Big Freeze at the MCG, the piece raised significant funds for the cause. A deep connection formed with the Daniher family, leading to further commissions in 2023 and 2024 in which Mike captured Neale’s continued fight on canvas each year.

Mike’s favourite works are not always the most technically complex, but those carrying emotional weight and community impact.

Following the Kangaroo Island bushfires, he donated his time to paint a vibrant koala in Penneshaw, a symbol of resilience and hope emerging from devastation.

Generosity is evident not only in his philanthropic pursuits, but in the care he extends to clients. Each project starts with the client’s vision, then becomes a spatial analysis that translates the brief into idea, sketched on an iPad then meticulously gridded on the wall like a map, before the first spray touches the surface. This balance between planning and play allows his murals to resonate: responsive to clients, bold in scale, and grounded in meaning.

For Mike, mural art is more than aesthetic intervention. It is a catalyst for pride, identity and belonging. Good art, he says, ‘captures identity, creates a connection to places, people and things.’

While scale does not intimidate him, and he thrives on the expansive potential of public walls, Mike equally treasures his smaller abstract canvases. These are his playground spaces, where emotion and colour converse freely.

‘I like abstract art because of the creative freedom and a bit of mystery behind the meaning,” he explains. A recent exhibition at The Salopian Inn in McLaren Vale invited locals to experience these works alongside partner Alexia Prokopec’s vibrant acrylic landscapes, together transforming the restaurant walls into a layered and intriguing feast of sight.

Looking ahead to 2026, his ambitions are big, literally and figuratively. He envisions more large-scale public and private works, collaborations with schools, and rural projects that extend beyond urban walls. His ambition is not self-serving, but communal.

‘I am a people person,’ he says. ‘My biggest goal is to make people happy. I want my work to be a positive experience for as many people as possible and to inspire the next generation of young artists.’

Perhaps that generosity is the most defining aspect of Mike Sander – an artist who seeks to spark joy through his colourful work in the place he calls home. @mike_sander_art

Native blooms fresh from the farm

At Native Avenue, a small, family-run farm, we grow and cut premium-quality blooms, supplying florists and direct to you via The Banksia Pod. Visit our farm shop to explore stunning, longlasting natives and unique gifts.

The Banksia Pod: 389 Old Coach Road, Aldinga Thurs - Sun 10am till 2pm | @native.avenue | @the.banksiapod

cooperstyleco.com.au

Autumn book reviews

by Mark Laurie of South Seas Books, Port Elliot.

Heart of Ice: A Journey into Antarctica’s Frozen Realm

by Joy McCann

Published by NewSouth Publishing

ISBN 9781742237800

$34.99

As the title suggests, Heart of Ice puts Antarctica’s ice at the centre of the life story of the world’s driest and southernmost continent, exploring its various manifestations and moods and how it has been inhabited, experienced, imagined and invested with meaning over time. It’s a book that delivers a narrative of humans in history rather than humans as history.

Far from being a great white void, we see ice in its many characters and forms, shrouding sub-glacial lakes, singing as it melts, harbouring an array of wonderfully

adapted life forms from the largest ever creature to have lived on earth, the Antarctic blue whale, to swarms of krill so dense they’re visible from space.

The variety of such forms is perhaps the greatest surprise, the polar south being so at odds with our understanding of habitability and the reported experiences of the early explorers. That species of whales, seals and toothfish have survived, if barely, the insatiable slaughter we have meted out to them, is also a source of some amazement. It seems that the horrors of being a southern right whale amid the cruelty of industrialised whaling is still in the memory of those relatively few whales that survived, living as they can for onehundred-and-thirty years.

Those adventuresome souls who have journeyed deep onto the ice plateau have experienced the ‘strange distortions of place and time’ which arise scientifically from the geographic and magnetic poles and emerge emotionally in so foreign and inhospitable a place. It has prompted many of them to think entirely anew. This book prompts us all to do so, armed with the knowledge gained from ice cores drilled more than three kilometres down, containing ice more than 800,000 years old and imprints from the Anthropocene – or human – age. Thanks to that human impact, the Antarctic ice sheet is showing signs of instability. Global warming, it seems, is waking giants.

This, My Second Life

by Patrick Charnley

Published by Hutchinson Heinemann

ISBN 9781529155259

$34.99

Suffering a cardiac arrest and not drawing breath for forty minutes, Jago Trevarno knows that he and his life will never be quite the same. He must now manage tiredness, headaches, reduced vision, ‘emotional blunting’ and dulled reactions. A brain injury has left him floating in an altered state in an altered world.

Without parents, he moves in with his uncle on a small farm in coastal Cornwall to recover. There, they lead a simple, unhurried life, caring for the land and their animals, punctuated by flashbacks to Jago’s past life. Jago, in his second life, is possessed of a disarming, unselfconscious directness as he responds to his environment, his new circumstances and

in his engagement with others. But the idyll is pierced by the schemes and actions of their neighbour, a man of low principles and barely disguised violence, who threatens everything.

That the author suffered the same debilitating cardiac arrest and brain injury as Jago makes sense of the clarity of description. However, it is more startling to realise that a sufferer of ‘emotional blunting’ has been able to produce a book of such simple power and wonderment, truly leaving the past in the past as Jago is counselled. Written beautifully, boasting simple language that chimes clear and pure as a bell, this debut novel cuts through the clutter we collect around us, assessing who and what we need to live life well.

Two Islands

by Ian Kemish

Published by University of Queensland Press

ISBN 978070226899

$34.99

This debut work of fiction by a retired Australian diplomat takes us to the dark spaces of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the former

Yugoslavia, during the vicious ethnic conflict which scarred the 1990s.

Niko, witness to the sort of atrocity for which that drawn-out episode became well known, flees to Scotland’s remote western islands to escape those who would silence him and bury the evidence he harbours. But staying invisible among so few people when you are different proves impossible. Niko continues to flee, hostage to his own choices and the varying wills of those in his orbit. It is those who coalesce around him who are perhaps the book’s great strength, in the nuance and the subtlety with which they reveal themselves.

Zig-zagging between eastern Europe, Australia and Scotland, this well-paced thriller explores the aftermath of violent conflict: the friction between conscience and fear that so often follows it; the reverberations that wash up on wild shores. While international affairs, global institutions and the machinations of the diplomats and politicians provide the novel’s backdrop, at heart it is a sensitive rendering of the human condition. As one protagonist notes, ‘... we’re all marked by something’. It’s how we reach beyond that ‘something’ to find goodness that truly marks us.

Eradication

by Jonathan Miles

Published by Quercus riverrun

ISBN 9781529449037

$34.99

A man is sent to a tiny island in the remote Pacific, charged with eradication of the feral goats said to be systematically and singlehandedly destroying its ecology.

Equipped with a high-powered hunting rifle, famine relief supplies and a belief that he’s doing his part to save the world, Adi lands brimming with purpose, ready to do his duty. He has been thoroughly briefed by the Foundation which has employed him for the task, a slightly Orwellian environmental body with cultish methods, filled with ‘softfaced young people aglow with conviction, abuzz with righteous purpose’.

Naturally, the reality is rather different for this former schoolteacher and musician, struggling profoundly with the loss of his family and ‘honeycombed with questions and doubts’. Killing goats is far more confronting than he’d considered, away from the abstract ‘contrived codes of conduct’ of sport hunting.

The island is also a base for piles of plastic trash and illegal shark finners who both threaten him and expose the hypocrisy of his undertaking. It seems that the environment is more resilient than he’s been led to believe and that the cause of the ecological problems is more complex than just the goats left on the island by whalers decades before.

Within this sometimes macabre, dark satire lie endless questions about the ridiculousness of our playing god, about our right to do so. For, in all of our ignorance, thoughtlessness and greed, the causes of nature’s imbalances all seem to loop inevitably back to us.

The autumn cool-down

Autumn reds you’re going to love.

Words by Jacob Barter and Darren Oemcke – from Vino Bozo podcast

Lake Breeze Wines

Langhorne Creek

2025 Nero D’avola

Here’s a Nero D’avola that's seen a little treatment similar to that of a beaujolais nouveau: fancy words for the bright fruit, low tannin and juicy weight style of red wine. Very much suited to a day at the beach, pulled out of the esky and then sat in the sand, typically gone before it has the chance to warm up.

Brash Higgins

Clarendon

2022 ‘Smart Vineyard’ Grenache

For a moment there, when we saw that we were going to be tucking into Brad's ‘Smart Vineyard’ Grenache for this article, we thought we’d dress nicely. The Smart Vineyard is two hectares of old bush vines, aged seventy to one-hundred-and-ten years, boasting early morning sun with a longer and cooler ripening window than anywhere else in Clarendon. It’s a special moment any time you get the chance to drink a wine from this parcel of fruit. In the glass it shows ferrous, almost sanguine weight. Chalk-defined tannins and a subtle saline edge (classic Mclaren Vale). We finished the bottle quite greedily that same evening.

Poppelvej

Adelaide Hills

2025 ‘Dancing in the Doldrums’ Pinot Meunier

If you want a summer red that feels like a good playlist, start here. Poppelvej (Danish for poplar tree on the top of a hill) is Uffe doing what Uffe does best, light red with an electric pulse. Pinot Meunier, one of the three varieties used in Champagne, at forty per cent whole bunch and a Pied de Cuve ferment started in the vineyard, this wine is pure energy. Expect intense cherry cola, a touch of whole bunch vegetal, savoury complexity, and that unmistakable raciness that runs through all of Uffe’s wines. First date wine, it’s energetic, unconventional and designed to keep things fun but intriguing. Chill it, pour it, and let it set the tone.

Golden Child

Adelaide Hills

2025 ‘Lazy Sundays’ Light Red

This wine comes with instructions right there on the label: lazy Sundays. Jimmy the Golden Child and winemaker himself says, 'You can drink it in the a.m. and the p.m. We’ve been making it since 2016, it was Golden Child's first wine to really get the lens on us, since then it's been a staple in the line-up.' Pinot Noir brings bright red fruit and lift, while Syrah (Shiraz grown on a cooler site) fills in the gaps with structure, grip and volume. Peppery spice through the palate and just enough tannin bite on the finish to keep it interesting. Dark fruit appears and red fruit lingers, but it never tips into jamminess, staying firmly in that bright, refreshing zone. Lazy Sundays, eh? Lazy any day that ends with a Y more like it.

Hooley dooley, summer has just about wrapped up and we’ve officially hit that sweet spot where afternoons cool just enough for red wine to make sense again –  especially chilled, bright, food-friendly reds. So grab a glass, we’ve got the wines.

Willinga 100

McLaren Vale

2024 Grenache

This Grenache is pure McLaren Vale joy, bright red fruit, herbal spice and a sense of movement. This wine dances between serious and fun. Once that suggestion lands, it’s hard not to see. Renae Hirsch’s skill with her winemaking is evident, those low, driving tannins and weight that give the wine its skeleton, the lift of the fruit its skin, the intriguing vegetal slash herbal and spiced high tones make it boogie all over. This is the kind of red you pour when you want the table to impress but also loosen up. It’s such a smart wine and it reads like that: celebratory, expressive, modern-finessed Grenache in a red dress. Perfect for celebrating life, with or without flamenco guitarists.

Battle of Bosworth

McLaren Vale

2025 ‘Exile’ Touriga Nacional

Touriga Nacional isn’t a shy variety. Its affinity for growing well in drier conditions as well as its rich plethora of dark fruits has its name synonymous with the fortified wines of Portugal. Battle of Bosworth's ‘Exile’ shows what a big variety like Touriga can do with some finer hands at play. Deep in colour and loaded with flavour, this wine arrives with a nose that sings ruby Port with its dark fruit, richness and that unmistakable sense of intensity. But rather than leaning in syrupy or heavy, it sits very fresh and controlled. There’s power here, but it’s focused and dressed real nice.

Hither & Yon

McLaren Vale

2024 Mencía

This wine is in the froth zone. Hither & Yon’s Mencía leans into what the variety does best: dark, defined red fruit, herbal lift, gentle spice and a deliberate thread of earthiness. It avoids the overly clean style seen in some early Australian examples, instead embracing texture. There’s a distinctly McLaren Vale signature running through it via a saline bead we can’t shut up about. Side note: Malcolm the winemaker set the scene correctly when getting some info from him over the phone – he actually had a bottle of Mencía in the fridge just about to be cracked open after a day in Kingston crayfishing.

Larnook

McLaren Vale

2024 Shiraz

Autumn reds need to be built for all parties. With the Larnook Shiraz capping off the tasting, we were absolutely smitten. More serious in fullness than its predecessors, this showed off McLaren Vale's modern Shiraz image so correctly. Full-bodied yet restrained, maritime freshness certainly present with the jammy stereotypes of old being left behind. Lift and spice amongst the brambles. Alexia and Damo (winemaker, sales rep, spouses) brought Larnook to life in a time when others would have called them crazy. Now with four years of trade and a soon-to-be-opened cellar door, we reckon you can call this a success story.

From Vietnam, with love

Story by Katie Spain.

When Han Nguyen opened the doors to her Vietnamese eatery, Madame Banh Mi, on Old Noarlunga’s Victor Harbor Road in late 2025, she wasn’t expecting a crowd.

‘My husband invited a few of his friends because we didn’t think we’d be busy straight away,’ Han says. ‘But people were lining up to order. One customer said, “This is the second time I’ve been here today!”’

Han was born in Ho Chi Minh City in 1988 and moved to Australia at seventeen to pursue a career in logistics. Memories of time spent in the kitchen with her mother and bà ngoąi (grandmother) led her to open her first Vietnamese shop in Holden Hill, each dish reminding her of the women who raised her and shaped her love of cooking.

‘My father had a farm so I grew up with free-range chickens, organic vegetables and fish straight from the river,’ Han says. ‘When I was eight, I started going to the local market with my grandma. She showed me how to select fresh vegetables, meat and seafood.’

The matriarchs were ruthless in their pursuit of quality and technique.

‘Grandma was really fussy. If the flavour wasn’t right, we had to do it again. That’s how I learned attention to detail.’

It rubbed off on Han, who insists everything (other than the bread rolls – for now) is made in house from scratch. ‘I’m obsessed with flavour and really strict on quality. If a supplier cuts corners, I cancel them immediately. What the customer eats reflects on me.’

The result is a menu boasting a kaleidoscope of Vietnamese flavours and aromas. The hero is the bánh mì – a crunchy roll filled with homemade garlic butter, pâté, meat or tofu, pickled carrot, coriander and optional chilli. Cold rolls, salad bowls, spring rolls, fried rice and steaming bowls of pho are also popular. There’s even a breakfast version with bacon and runny egg yolk. ‘People order that all day,’ Han says. ‘Even night time.’

Fresh juices and traditional Vietnamese iced coffee are drawcards. For the latter, it’s ‘... all about the balance and texture of the really strong coffee and the sweet condensed milk.’

A steady flow of tradies, commuters, beach-loving day-trippers and locals stops by to dine in or grab and go. One wall features a mural of Han as a young woman in Vietnam, while the opposite wall bursts with images of her homeland. A large wooden chair is a hit with children. ‘That’s a gift my husband got from his business partner in Bali. It was a real king’s chair. People sit there like they own the place,’ Han laughs.

Witnessing people appreciate the flavours of her homeland is a reminder that every second counts. Han learnt this after kidney failure forced her to choose between her first eatery and her logistics job.

‘I was working two jobs and was exhausted,’ she says. ‘The GP called me urgently and said, “You need to go to hospital ASAP … both kidneys are not working, you’ve got less than five per cent left.” I had to sell my shop, my baby … after all that hard work.’

Han spent a year on dialysis before receiving a lifesaving transplant. ‘It was two in the morning when they called. The day of the transplant was my birthday.’

Opening Madame Banh Mi was a full-circle moment and Han has big plans for the future, including opening in Brighton and Victor Harbor and making her own bread. For that, she’ll go back to Vietnam to research the perfect bread.

Every herb-packed cold roll and every welcome drink is her way of saying thank you – to her grandmother, her mum, the stranger who gave her a kidney, and the locals who line up at the door.

‘I got a second chance at life,’ Han says. ‘Now, I go for it.’ Madame Banh Mi, 88 Victor Harbor Road, Old Noarlunga.

Pomology @ Tarrawood

Words by Myriah Smith.

They

say smell is the gateway to memory. For Joel Brockhoff, the sweet scent of ripe stone fruit, packed tightly into a stonewalled, dirt-floored shed, does exactly that.

In an instant, he’s transported back to a very happy childhood on the farm, shaped by hard work, dependence on the weather, and a daily routine determined by the rhythms of the seasons. Most importantly, always surrounded by family and, of course, apples by the dozen.

It’s not often you hear of a thriving South Australian business that began more than one-hundred-and-ten years ago. The seeds of Pomology at Tarrawood – located in Lenswood in the Adelaide Hills – were sown by Joel’s great-grandfather David, who started growing fruit and vegetables on the family property. His son Roger later took the reins, expanding the orchards with a focus on apples, alongside kiwifruit, lemons and avocados. Twenty years ago, Joel and his father Peter expanded onto a neighbouring property, beginning the next chapter of this multi-generational story.

Today, Pomology at Tarrawood produces fifteen varieties of apples, six varieties of pears, as well as lemons, kiwifruit, avocados, cherries, wine grapes and figs, all shared with the local community at the Willunga Farmers Market.

Before becoming a fourth-generation farmowner, Joel had the privilege of growing up on his family farm, spending school holidays playing, exploring, helping his dad, and dreaming of spending his life on the farm. His dream has come true. Joel now runs the business, his dad still heavily involved and bearing the well-earned title of Master Problem Solver. The next generation of Brockhoffs has also

joined in the work, with Joel’s three kids now running around the farm and learning the ropes.

If you’re anything like me, you might wonder what a typical week looks like for an apple producer? Joel doesn’t hesitate to say that it is a seven-day work week, yet he’s quick to add that it is okay, when you love what you do and the people you do it with.

The daily jobs on the farm change with the seasons, following the rhythm of nature. Winter is all about pruning, a repetitive task, but a crucial one, setting the trees up for the year’s crop. When spring arrives, the orchard springs back to life. Blossoms bloom, bees arrive for pollination and mowing and spraying take over. Summer brings heat and long days, with fruit thinning and endless irrigation keeping the orchard thriving. Then comes the best part of the year, according to the Brockhoffs: autumn. Time to harvest. It is the busiest time of the year. It reveals the return for a year’s hard work, a culmination of highs and lows, a measure of how well challenges have been met.

Farming is not without its difficulties. The increasing unpredictability of the weather is tough, especially after recording their driest fifteen-month period on record, during which the family watched the surrounding stringybark forest dying in spots around them. Add to that the pressures of a fickle market, where not everyone understands that fresh, sustainably grown produce doesn’t always look perfect.

When I asked Joel what he thinks are the biggest issues facing farmers today, he was clear that they were not being paid enough for their produce. Supermarkets undercut growers, forcing them to cut costs, by relying on artificial fertilisers or producing food that wasn’t sustainably grown. This is why farmers’ markets were

becoming increasingly important for small family farms, ensuring fair pricing and a sustainable livelihood.

For Pomology at Tarrawood, that means selling their fruit at markets, including a weekly stall at Willunga Farmers Market. Joel loves the trade at the market, enjoying the chance to talk to customers about their produce and explaining why less spraying in their orchard sometimes means the fruit doesn’t look like supermarket apples. It means they get to grow fruit they are proud of while earning a fair, sustaining return. As Joel says, farmers’ market customers are the best sort of people. You can’t argue with that!

Pomology at Tarrawood has always been, and remains, a family affair. If there’s one recurring theme from this family’s long story, it’s that among the busy-ness and stresses of life, it’s important to enjoy what you do, and who you do it with. It might be true, an apple a day might just keep the doctor away.

Pomology tarte tatin

Beautifully simple and – honestly – rather impressive. A good-quality, store-bought pastry (we used Carême) keeps things easy, though you’re welcome to make a rough-puff pastry if you prefer.

Ingredients

2 Pomology Granny Smith apples

120g caster sugar

1tbs lemon juice

30g unsalted butter, chopped

½tsp of cinnamon

1 egg

Double cream, to serve

Method

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Lightly grease the base of a 20cm pie dish or heavy, ovenproof frying pan, then line the base with baking paper.

Quarter the apples and remove the cores. Slice each quarter finely into 2-3mm slices. Place the apple slices in a bowl, add the cinnamon, and gently toss to coat. Set aside.

Place the sugar in a saucepan over medium heat and allow it to begin to caramelise, swirling the pan occasionally, until it forms a smooth caramel. When the caramel reaches a light golden amber, carefully add the butter and swirl until melted and fully incorporated. Add the lemon juice (stand back slightly, as it will bubble up), then stir to combine.

Immediately pour the caramel into the prepared pan, tilting to coat the base evenly. Starting from the outer edge, arrange the apple slices in overlapping circles, fanning them neatly towards the centre to form a single, snug layer.

In a small bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and 1tbs of water to make an egg wash. Remove the pastry from the fridge, roll it out slightly larger than the pan, and cut a neat circle to the required size. Lightly prick the pastry all over with a fork. Lay the pastry over the apples, tucking the edges gently down around the fruit. Brush the pastry with the egg wash.

Bake for 20-30 minutes, or until the pastry is puffed and deeply golden, and the caramel is bubbling around the edges. Remove from the oven and allow to stand for 10-15 minutes.

Carefully invert onto a serving plate. Serve warm with double cream.

Local selections

New builds, renovations and custom-design projects all call for the right blend of skill, creativity and attention to detail. Across the Fleurieu and South Australia, trusted professionals are delivering exceptional results – inside and out. From high-quality

01. Intime Kitchens & Interiors

At the heart of the HIA award-winning Dune House sits a sophisticated and inviting kitchen custom-supplied and installed by Intime Kitchens & Interiors. Designed to complement the home’s coastal setting, the kitchen finds a considered balance between striking architecture and warmth. Clean cabinetry lines are softened by carefully selected materials, including hoop pine cabinetry and a marine plywood ceiling with a rich, textural brick terracotta splashback. These elements are as stunning as they are practical, seamlessly integrated to create a space that feels both refined and highly liveable, an approach that has made Intime a trusted choice for both builders and private clients.

For every project, Sam and the Intime team begin by understanding how their clients will live within the space, thoughtfully crafting

bespoke kitchens, bathrooms and interiors that enhance lifestyle, connection and everyday functionality. With more than thirty years of craftsmanship, combined with the latest technologies and materials, each project is delivered with precision, care and a commitment to exceeding expectations. intimekitchens.com.au

Dune House (depicted above), by 4Life Constructions, won the Custom Built Home and Coastal Home awards at the 2025 HIA South Australia Housing and Kitchen & Bathroom Awards.

Photo by Clique Creative.

02. Enhance Polished Concrete

Smooth underfoot, this polished concrete floor brings a calm, natural clarity to this inviting entertaining space. To achieve this look Enhance Polished Concrete used premix stylecrete finished with a

masonry and the newest innovations in air-conditioning to lighting and designer fans, these local experts bring vision to life with precision, care and a collaborative spirit.

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minimal grind and satin mechanical polish. With more than twenty years of experience, Enhance works closely with builders, businesses and home owners to create premium concrete flooring, offering finishes ranging from minimal to full aggregate exposure, as well as honed and alfresco-ready solutions. Each surface is carefully ground, polished and sealed using highquality, environmentally responsible products to achieve a timeless, low-maintenance result.

Grounding contemporary architecture in quiet confidence, Enhance Polished Concrete delivers refined concrete finishes that balance aesthetic impact with everyday practicality. enhancepolishedconcrete.com.au

03. Stairlock

Bathed in natural light, this custom staircase from Stairlock marries timeless craftsmanship and elegance. Rich timber treads and crisp

white balustrades create an elevated contrast, while subtle integrated lighting adds another level of luxury.

Stairlock delivers crafted staircases that bring together form and function. Considered, clean, modern designs are paired with precision manufacturing to ensure the right fit across a wide range of needs and projects. Stairlock sources only quality materials and manufactures exclusively from its purpose-built South Australian facility.

The experienced team will help you get the most from your next project, whether it’s hundreds of sets of stairs or one beautifully crafted statement staircase. Their expertise guides you through product selection, costs and installation options from start to finish. Third-generation and family-owned, Stairlock is a trusted local choice for your next project.

stairlock.com.au

FLM summer launch at Maxwell’s Grocery, Aldinga

On 11 December, a jolly bunch of excellent people joined us on the deck at Maxwell’s Grocery in Aldinga for our summer issue launch. We enjoyed cocktails from Kangaroo Island Spirits alongside a superb selection of wines from Lake Breeze

Wines, Karrawatta Wines, Hither & Yon, Battle of Bosworth, Willunga 100 and Stoke

Photography by Erin

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Out and about

Every Saturday, rain, hail or shine, the Willunga Farmers Market hums with connection. For more than two decades, locals and visitors have gathered here for fresh, seasonal food and familiar faces – from lifelong stallholders to families who make it part of a weekly ritual. It’s a place to buy direct from the people who grow and make your food, to listen to music and share conversation, and to feel part of a community that’s living, evolving and deeply rooted in the region. Photography by Diana Brandt.

01.Linda

Linda has been coming to the market for more than fifteen years. She loves the real sense of community – people are friendly, familiar and genuinely connected.

Her favourite part is the quality of the produce, which she finds lasts much longer than supermarket greens. She prefers buying direct from local growers rather than shopping at big supermarkets, valuing freshness and connection to where her food comes from.

02.Sandy – local, with granddaughter Daphne and son Byron

Sandy has been coming since the very beginning, when the market was first officially opened with David Suzuki. Byron and his daughter travel from Sydney once a year, and a highlight of their visit is always stopping for ice cream at the market.

Sandy often buys gluten-free sourdough from the bakery and fresh produce each week. If she were to gift something, she’d likely choose a cake or a quiche – something simple, delicious and made with love. She also treasures the music at the market and enjoys singing in the choir.

03.Jill Stone – Herbivorous

Jill has been trading since the third week the market began – around twentythree years ago. She regularly buys bread and eggs and often stays to eat at the market, enjoying smashed potatoes with yoghurt and a little treat. What she values most is the social aspect, staying connected, making friends, and feeling part of a living, evolving community.

If she were to gift something, she’d choose a jar of curry paste, pickles or some beautiful mushrooms from Choice Mushrooms

04.Carla Hardy – Sellicks Beach

Carla has been attending since October last year, after moving to Sellicks Beach. She usually buys leafy greens, vegetables and stone fruit from orchardists Bill and Nick when in season – whatever is fresh and available. For a gift, she would choose something from Bush Organics – perhaps honey, olive oil or one of their beautiful balms.

05.Andrea Ball

Andrea has been coming since the very day she moved to Willunga five years ago. She runs a food business and says she couldn’t imagine living without the market. Every week she does a full circuit, speaking to producers and connecting with friends.

For a gift, she would choose Peninsula Providore olive oil and Taronga almonds. For her, the relationships with producers are just as valuable as the food itself.

06.Lauren McKay and Harvey Thorne

Lauren has been coming for around twelve years, starting when she worked with Harvest the Fleurieu. Harvey has been coming since he was a child. Supporting local producers is very important to them.

07.Laura Simpfendorfer and Finn Pfluger, with Olli and Delilah Finn has been coming to the market his whole life, since childhood, and Laura has been attending since 2019. They love the sense of community and the connection to local, seasonal food. Their shopping changes with the seasons, but they always buy eggs, dairy and honey.

We believe in being yourself. We celebrate your differences. We embrace change. We, like you, are one of a kind.

Let us design and make your space. South Australian HIA Award winners, year after year. spacecraftjoinery.com.au