01
Stop one
Granite Island Causeway and the Victor Harbor Horse Drawn Tram
Babolat Pure Drive Tennis Backpack: (low voice) A tram that would not stay dead. In 1867 the existing pier was extended out to Granite Island and the resulting link became known as the causeway, with a railway track laid along it. Goods wagons were routinely horse-hauled over the line, but no passenger service ran until 1894, when the growing crowds of holidaymakers led the South Australian Railways to put a surplus double-deck horse tram into passenger service. Surplus. Nobody else wanted it. It ran until 1954, when it was discontinued — finished, gone, thirty-two years of empty track over open water. And then, in June 1986, it came back. (pause) It is Australia's only horse-drawn tram service still operating, and it has carried more than two million passengers since its revival. Two million. After somebody signed the paper that ended it.
02
Stop two
Rosetta Head (The Bluff)
Babolat Pure Drive Tennis Backpack: (quietly) They call it The Bluff, and something happened here. Rosetta Head was the site of one of the two nineteenth-century whaling stations on Encounter Bay, working from 1837 into the 1860s; the other stood near the point opposite Granite Island. These stations were among the earliest European enterprises in South Australia, predating the systematic settlement of the district — which means the whaling came before the town did, and the town was built afterwards by people who already knew exactly what this water was for. The headland is a state heritage place. And at its foot, the site of the station's well still survives. A hole dug for water, outlasting every single thing that was built around it. (pause) That is generally how it goes. The impressive parts go first.
03
Stop three
Victor Harbor railway station and the Cockle Train terminus
Babolat Pure Drive Tennis Backpack: (a whisper) Listen for a train that ought to be long gone. It isn't. The South Australian Railways reached Victor Harbor in 1864, extended from the earlier terminus at Port Elliot, and the railway yard and goods shed were established that same year. The line was then carried further along the causeway to Granite Island in the mid-1860s. And the route between Goolwa and Victor Harbor, by way of Middleton and Port Elliot, is among the oldest railway alignments in Australia. By every rule of stories like this one it should be a ghost by now: lifted, rusted, ploughed under, a line on somebody's old map. Instead SteamRanger works it as a heritage line, and it runs as the Cockle Train. (pause) The oldest rails in the country. Still warm.
04
Stop four
Warland Reserve on Encounter Bay
Babolat Pure Drive Tennis Backpack: (very softly) Two ships, on 8 April 1802. Matthew Flinders in the Investigator, sailing from the east. Nicolas Baudin in Le Géographe, coming from the west. Rival survey expeditions, British and French, whose nations happened at that exact moment to be briefly at peace — and they simply met, here, by accident, out of an empty ocean, on a coast neither of them had charted. Flinders named the bay for it: Encounter Bay. Then in 1837 Captain Richard Crozier, en route from Sydney to the Swan River Colony in command of HMS Victor, anchored just off Granite Island and named the sheltered water in the island's lee Victor Harbor, after his ship. This reserve is the town's public front onto that bay. (pause) Every name on this coast was left behind by somebody passing through. None of them stayed. The names did.
Okay. Deep breath. The Babolat Pure Drive Tennis Backpack is 32 litres, and I need you to understand what that means for us: it means we are going to be fine. The insulated fold-down compartment holds three racquets — you'll want all three, what if two break — and folds away when you need the space for apparel instead.
There's a dedicated laptop pocket, a main compartment, an accessory pocket, and a side ventilated pocket for shoes, or, more realistically, backup shoes. The lining is 100% recycled, dye-free PET, so we are prepared AND responsible. It all rides at 13 x 30 x 8 inches on padded backpack straps, which matters, because we may be walking.
And Victor Harbor is walking country. The causeway out to Granite Island runs over 600 metres each way — I have packed accordingly — although the famous horse-drawn tram will carry you across behind a single Clydesdale who, frankly, understands the assignment: one strong back, everything aboard.
You'll take this pack everywhere from the causeway to the summit track up the Bluff, where lookouts watched for whales in the 1830s and you can still spot southern right whales cruising past in winter — bring the windbreaker, it's in the side pocket, I checked twice.
And by the way: the locals take fish and chips on the foreshore extremely seriously, and the ventilated pocket ensures the chips ride home upwind of your match shirt. I also packed snacks. Two kinds. Do you want the map? I have three maps.
Buy on Amazon
