Population: 1,598,000 (from September 2008)
Area: 983,482 kmē
Borders: Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, Northern Territory, Western Australia
When you visit Australia there are a few main places you go to: Sydney, the Red Centre and the Gold Coast. South Australia is not on that list, and is really an optional extra. You need a car if you are going to explore it properly, as the places you can access with public transport are only a mediocre show of what we have down here.
We aren't convicts. Let me clear that up right away. We are Germans and other Europeans who felt that settling here was a good idea. That includes a lot of Welsh people, and there are some Asians from the various mining booms, but the population of Asians has only really started growing in recent years. When the place was settled in 1936 we were given 802,511 kmē, and Adelaide was declared Adelaide by Colonel William Light, whose statue gazes down on the state's capital city from a small hill.
South Australia is the driest state in the driest country in the world. (We shan't include Antarctica, that is just silly. Of course it doesn't rain, it snows.) Once upon a time there was a man named George Goyder. Mr Goyder travelled through South Australia and from his travels drew a line on a map. He said that south of that line crops could be grown, stock could be grazed and you could spend your evenings sitting on the porch with a cold beer in one hand smiling at your life. North of that line, all farming endeavors should not be pursued. South of the line is where all the rain happens. It is where the grapes and wheat is grown, the cows are grazed and the sheep are shorn. On the line one can see dead farmhouses, long forgotten and falling down. Above the line there are only mining towns.
Thanks to the Germans we have a lot of wineries in South Australia. Places including but not exclusive to the Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale, Langhorne Creek and Clare all boast a large number of wineries, and these wines are sold all around the world. Jacob's Creek is one of these wineries that instantly springs to my mind.
South Australia boasts a large number of mines, including Coober Pedy, the place from which the world's largest number of opals are mined, Olympic Dam, where there seems to be a lot of uranium (South Australia supplies 22% of the world's uranium.) Silver and copper have also been mined, and still are to some minor extent.
Most of what South Australia produces gets exported; most of the raw materials mined are sent off to China.
Things to do here
You can, uh... visit the art gallery? There's a zoo which just got upgraded to look ubercool, the orangutans have like this totally sweet forest like environment, and the tigers have a swimming pool. There are pandas, as well. I haven't seen them but I am told they are just oh so adorable.
But seriously, there isn't much to do here, because, as a tourist, you probably won't have a car or the desire to drive for hundreds of kilometers. You should probably hop up to the Barossa Valley if you can, or travel through the Adelaide hills a little. Hahndorf is a nice little town for lunch. We say it is German but it doesn't look German at all. You can spend a day down at the beach, which is easy to get to: either find a bus or a train to the city, get yourself a map and walk to Victoria Square, and from there you can catch a tram to Glenelg beach.
I recommend a drive out to Burra. I only recommend Burra because I love this little town and I know from experience that the trip is a perfect example of what Australia looks like. Port Pirie or Port Augusta are also fun to go to, though I have only driven through Port Augusta on my way down the peninsula, which is filled with hundreds of beaches, but are only recommended if you can spend at least a weekend down there. If you do go, stop at the petrol stations with trucks outside for food. The truckies know where the best places are.
Burra is still below Goyder's Line so you shan't get a real feel of the desert. It used to be surrounded by bush but the trees were cut down for smelting the copper, so these days it is semi-rolling hills of green-grey grass. It is north of Adelaide and can be travelled to and visited in a day, though you may wish to stop and take photos of the landscape and rundown forgotten farm houses along the way. It used to be home to a copper mine, but these days it is pastoral and historical. It used to be a very large town but when the mines closed the population dropped dramatically.
Most of the population lived in dugouts along the river bank, and it is very interesting to go and have a look at these. A drive around the town will provide you with plenty to look at, there are the dugouts and other houses that the miners lived in, as well as the aspects of the mine itself. If you so desire you can stay there for a night.
You could also go down to Victor Harbor, ride the horse cart across to the island and see the fairy penguins, and go for a walk up the Bluff. That is always a fun day out for the family. Food can be bought there, or packed and eaten as a picnic on the grass by the whale's tail fountain. In whale season you can go to the information booth and find out where the most whale sightings are. There is, of course, Kangaroo Island. If you do go to KI, there are a number of ways to get there: if you have a car you should probably go with the ferry, and if not there is a plane you can catch, though I am not sure how often it runs. Of course, there are tours you can go on if you like that sort of thing, otherwise a map and a car is about all you need. Kangaroo Island is a very fun place to go.
Resources:
http://www.jacboscreek.com (Interestingly, it asks for your age and country, so that it can determine that you are of the legal drinking age in your country.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/south_australia
Personal knowledge of the place