Adelaide Hills Circle Link Bus - Tours the Hills by bus
with Keith ConlonWalking in the scrub, cruising through farming country, lazy lunches - they are all so near to the city in the Adelaide Hills, yet so far without a car. Until now. The Belair passenger train joins with a new weekend Hills Circle Link Bus, and this week, I hopped aboard with an Adelaide TAFE tourism student group for a do-it-yourself day tour. Even before we stepped on the coach, the old Belair railway station signal box beckoned. Keen volunteers maintain the mechanical levers and they explain the steam-era's charms on weekends before your magic carpet takes you on a sweep of the hills.
The hourly weekend train service takes about a half hour to wind its way from the Adelaide Station to Belair and the bus connects with it to leave just after 9.30am to 2.30pm to begin its three hour circle route. The idea is that passengers can tarry for an hour or two at any of its twelve stops to enjoy the local attractions, and join the bus again to complete the loop back to the station.
The first stop is not far into Belair National Park below the station, where, as the brochure puts it, there's "another world in your backyard". Arriving at a mid-Victorian hedged garden with a beautifully restored stone country house may be bemusing, but this is Old Government House. It provided cool summer respite for Her Majesty's representatives in the 1860's and 1870's, when it was surrounded by the Government Farm. The Friends gear the period-decorated interior on Sunday afternoons for visitors, and you can add an easy walk through South Australia's oldest National Park (there's a kids' playground down by a creek closeby too), before you catch the next bus that wends out of the gullies of the Park and up onto the pretty ridge road across to Mt. Lofty.
There is a brief guide on your day ticket to help you design your own hills tour, and drivers will give you a preview of the charms of each stopover. The Hills Circle Link is a day-dream come true for long-time travel man Murray Agostino, who has based it on other cities' Explorer buses and his experience connecting country trains and bus tours in Victoria.
Around Mt. Lofty Summit there are a quartet of stops to tempt passengers. Coffee and cake with a postcard view of Piccadilly Valley at nineteenth-century mansion Mt Lofty House? A walk or minibus tour in the hills Botanic Garden that spills down through stringybark forest into several gullies of exotic colour? Then there is Cleland Wildlife Reserve on the slopes towards the city with its kangaroos and cuddling koalas and more bush trails.
At the summit itself, everybody on board has a ten minute chance to see the 180† panorama with its city centrepiece below. The white Flinders Obelisk towers above the viewing plaza, and behind it the Summit Restaurant beckons with a regional produce menu to enjoy along with the view that goes forever. There will be another bus past in an hourÖ.or two!!
The trip through Uraidla (with its Sunday market) and Balhannah is pretty enough in itself, and round historic Hahndorf, the bus makes another bevy of stops. Beerenberg Strawberry Farm had to be en route, and the pick-your-own season is just beginning (October to May). It's a long walk from public transport, and so is The Cedars, the family home and studio of the much-loved painter Sir Hans Heysen. His back-lit gum trees with sheep beneath are scattered through his preserved property. Tours are available on Sundays for the new bus-travellers.
The Hahndorf Farm Barn, a few kilometres out of town will be a memorable stop for young families on board. Our test-run TAFE students cuddled bunnies, a calf, lambs and guinea pigs while others tried bottle feeding thirsty lambs with hilarious results.
Some passengers will no doubt stay on board the tour for a pleasant hills ramble and then spend all their off-bus time in the state's most visited town, Hahndorf. The bus will pick up and put down obligingly at each end of the long main street (the old Adelaide-Melbourne road) and in the middle as well. More lunch and coffee opportunities about. At one end "Otto's" is a famous country-baked pasty shop, and opposite there is a sign of the times - Mawson Ridge is a new winery's tasting room with a museum that celebrates the town's origins and the increasing range of gourmet local produce on sale.
Hahndorf is the village that nearly 200 Silesian migrants built. They had come to the new colony to practice their Lutheranism the way they wanted to, and at the other end, the Zebra Gallery is named after the ship that brought them, mastered by Captain Hahn. Over the road, another chance to eat in style - and in Germanic heritage. Thiele's cottage was built for the first couple to marry in Hahndorf and Hillstowe Wines have arranged another nice hills marriage of hills vintages with food that salutes local produce.
If pub atmosphere is what you are looking for, the bus stops in the middle of town outside the Hahndorf Inn, that first slaked the bullockies' thirst back in 1863. And there's a cultural feast opposite in the picturesque two-storey stone Hahndorf Academy with its arts and craft shows.
Our tour group gathered after a couple of hours in Hahndorf and pronounced the tour a great idea, especially for family and visitor groups who can't fit in one car, or who simply don't have access to one. At the moment the itinerary takes passengers from Hahndorf on the freeway straight back to Belair station, but in coming months it may include the attractive hills towns of Bridgewater, Aldgate and Stirling.
It's a new mobile weekend window on our very engaging Adelaide Hills region and somebody else does the driving as you plan your own tour on the Adelaide Hills Circle Link bus.
Details:
Adelaide Hills Circle Link
Bus
Trans Adelaide train - day passFares
$25.00 - adult + $5.60
$20.00 - seniors + $2.80
$15.00 - children under 15 + $0 - on weekendsEnquire about family rates.
Map
(click to enlarge)Brochures/Bookings
Hills Circle Link brochures and Hills Attractions brochures/bookings available at:SA Travel Centre
18 King William Street
Adelaide. SA 5000
Phone: 1300-655-276Trans-Adelaide train/bus information
Passenger Transport Infocentre
79 King William Street
Adelaide SA 5000
Phone: 8210-1000Hills Circle Link contact/bookings
Holiday Wonders of Australia
212 Belair Road
Hawthorn. Mitcham. SA 5062
Phone: 8373-1282
Fax No:8373-1292
