Explorer Leonie, her husband Andrew, and their two fur babies road tripped from their home in Melbourne to South Australia’s Streaky Bay and back.

 

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South Australia Road Trip Facts

Distance: Around 2,500km
Duration: 2 weeks or more
Start Point: Melbourne
End Point: Melbourne

About Our South Australia Road Trip With Dogs

Over 16 days, my husband and I and our two Golden Retrievers, Harry, and Albus, drove from Melbourne across Victoria and South Australia, staying at Port Lincoln on the Eyre Peninsula, Hardwicke Bay on the Yorke Peninsula, and Angaston in the Barossa Valley on the way.

After selling our business and semi-retiring, we’re experimenting with different styles of road trips. On this trip, we rented pet-friendly accommodation and also towed our fishing boat. Andrew’s a very keen fisherman so he hoped to fish whilst exploring a part of Australia we’d never visited. Here’s how it went!

Read more: 10 Best Dog-Friendly Campsites in South Australia

Where to Stay While Road Tripping South Australia With Dogs

We stayed in pet-friendly accommodation that we booked using Airbnb. Along this stretch of SA coastline though, campgrounds and caravan parks are plentiful, and they’re often located on absolute prime, beachfront areas.

We were amazed at how many caravans there were! Honestly, most of the towns were so sleepy that there seemed to be more caravans than residents!

 

Our emu neighbours in the caravan park

Where to Eat While Road Tripping South Australia With Dogs

Country pubs are always a highlight of an Australian road trip and this holiday was no different. We had dinner at the Cornucopia Hotel in Wallaroo and lunch at the Hotel Arno at Arno Bay. Both times, we ate outside under shade with our dogs.

If you go to Coffin Bay, you have to try the legendary Coffin Bay oysters. We sampled them for lunch at the Beachcomber Café and then, again at the more upmarket Oyster HQ. Again, both times, we ate outside and took our dogs with us.

On the Oyster Bay farm tour

Shuck yeah

We arranged doggie day care through MadPaws and had an amazing lunch at FINO at Seppeltsfield Winery in the Barossa. The driveway into Seppeltsfield is a grand entrance indeed as it’s lined with Canary Date palms – 2,000 of them are on the property. The terrace area outside FINO is gorgeous and the outbuildings store wares by local artisans.

 

Getting barreled

 

We had another great lunch at Essen by Artisans of Barossa in Tanunda in the Barossa. This time, we ate outside so that we could take the pooches. The meal was wonderful as was the local shiraz – ‘The Schiller’ by Schwarz Wine Co.

Things to Do While Road Tripping South Australia With Dogs

  • Fishing
  • Oyster tasting and harvesting
  • Explore secluded beaches
  • Visit wineries
  • Wildlife spotting

Read more: Your Epic Guide To A South Australia Road Trip

‘You can also go on heaps of walks…’ – Dogs

The perfect set up

Nearby Accommodation

Essential Gear for Road Tripping South Australia With Dogs

  • Spare fuel
  • Plenty of water
  • Snacks (human and doggie!)
  • Download some music, podcasts, and audiobooks before you leave
  • Doggy car kit, including: leads, a water bowl, food, and snacks, some doggie toys (balls are great) plus a bottle of water in case you can’t find clean water
  • Keep doggie bags handy so that you don’t leave any nasties behind

Read more: Remember to leave no trace!

 

Now you’re ready to get the pooches in the back seat

What It’s Like to Road Trip South Australia With Dogs

Our dogs are part of our family so we don’t like to leave them behind. Road trips are ideal for us to do together.

There are often activities that my husband and I want to do together – that’s when we call in doggy day care. It allows us to do those activities but still have our dogs with us for most of the trip.

Read more: 10 Ways to Adventure With Your Dog That Aren’t a Walk Around the Block

 

Our goldens at golden hour

Melbourne to Wallaroo (Where the Spencer Gulf Searoad Departs)

Distance: 885km
Driving time: 10 hours (plus time for human and dog rest breaks)

The first day of the drive was almost 900km from Melbourne straight across Victoria to Wallaroo. Dead kangaroo count en route was high. Scenery beauty count was not so high. It was a long day.

Driving 12+ hours in one day, especially with two dogs, is a big undertaking but we planned to catch the Spencer Gulf Searoad (a vehicle and passenger ferry transfer).

 

Aboard the Spencer Gulf Searoad

 

It leaves at 9.30am so we wanted to be in Wallaroo the night before.

To take two adults, a car, and a boat is almost $500AUD one way (ouch!) but it saves several hours of driving. As a bonus, we saw dolphins swimming beside the boat!

Lucky Bay (Where the Spencer Gulf Searoad Arrives) to Port Lincoln

Distance: 176km
Driving time: 2 hours

First stop for a few days was Port Lincoln, tuna capital of Australia, and home to about 15,000 people. It sits on beautiful Boston Harbour.

From Port Lincoln, it’s possible to day trip to other seaside towns. We (and our pooches!) visited Coffin Bay, Tumby Bay, and Streaky Bay while based here. (Note that Streaky Bay is a very long day trip – 293km each way).

 

Tumby Bay? More like turquoise bay

 

In Port Lincoln, Andrew went on a fishing charter one day and took his own boat out another couple of days. We happily enjoyed his catch of King George whiting.

Port Lincoln to Coffin Bay

Distance: 43.8km
Driving time: 34 minutes

Coffin Bay is famous for its oysters. Less well known are its emus! They wander wild on the beach and alongside the road, and seeing them out of captivity was a real treat.

Another day, we journeyed to Coffin Bay to do an Oyster Farm Tour.

 

Oyster farm views

 

We wanted to do this together so we found another local dog sitter via MadPaws. Our pampered city pooches got to play farm dogs for the day (they slept extra well that afternoon and night!).

The Oyster Farm Tour was a real highlight – we put on waders and sat on a pontoon as we learnt about oysters and how to shuck them. We rinsed the freshly shucked oysters in the sea water and ate them natural. What a treat!

Read more: How Coffin Bay’s First Dive Shop is Helping Restore Lost Underwater Ecosystems

Port Lincoln to Hardwicke Bay

Distance: 354km
Driving time: 6.5 hours (plus time for human and dog rest breaks)

From Port Lincoln on the Eyre Peninsula, we travelled to Hardwicke Bay on the Yorke Peninsula and stayed at a shack right on the beach. Every night we saw amazing, vivid sunsets and every day we saw pelicans and dolphins. Plus something quirky – tractors driving onto the beach to launch boats!

Long walks on the beach at Hardwicke Bay

Got to take the rig out on the sand too

We drove onto the beach ourselves in our 4WD. We had the beach to ourselves and let the dogs run off-leash. They had the time of their lives sprinting on the white sand, playing in the rock pools, and chasing a ball.

This part of the world has unspoilt, beautiful beaches, and seemingly few people. Again, the caravans seemed to outnumber the residents!

 

This place left the humans pretty happy too

Hardwicke Bay to Angaston (Barossa Valley)

Distance: 233km
Driving time: 2.5 hours

Last stop was a couple of days in the Barossa Valley – a renowned wine-producing region northeast of Adelaide. A gorgeous cottage in Angaston was home for a few nights and only a 2.5 hour drive from Hardwicke Bay.

Angaston is a lovely little town full of stone houses and buildings. The main street is lined with cafés and restaurants so you won’t go hungry there!

While in the Barossa, we visited a few wineries (as you do!) and organised doggie daycare for the pooches. At Rockford Wines, we saw grapes arriving in a Bedford truck and being ratcheted by hand in a basket press. It was like stepping back in time.

 

Some grapes ready to play squash

 

We also enjoyed the Penfolds Barossa Luxury Wine Experience. We tasted about seven premium wines including the legendary Penfolds ‘Grange’ (yes, it lived up to expectations!).

All the while, our host was explaining the history of Penfolds and the wines we were drinking. Most interesting to me was how the names of the wines have come about. Who knew that BIN stands for Batch Identification Number?

Also, that BIN 707 is named after the Boeing 707 aircraft that brought Australia closer to the rest of the world in the 1960s and flew low over the Penfolds’ HQ near Sydney airport.

Seppeltsfield Winery offers various experiences including winery tours and tasting of Para Vintage Tawny (port) direct from the barrel of your birth year, which we were lucky enough to taste from our birth years of 1967 and 1968!

 

We sipped at Seppeltsfield

Angaston to Melbourne

Distance: 740km
Driving time: 8.5 hours (plus time for human and dog rest breaks)

We’ve made the drive between Adelaide and our home in Melbourne several times so we didn’t make any further stops, other than for short breaks.

If you want somewhere interesting to stop though, there are plenty of towns including Mt Gambier, Hamilton, and Ballarat.

The most scenic route is along the coast, including the Great Ocean Road. Depending upon how many stops you wanted to make, this route would take 2-7 (or more!) days.

 

A quick beach break will never go unacknowledged

Tips for Road Tripping With Dogs

  • Stop at least once every two hours to let the dogs have a drink and blow off some energy. Ideally, find a dog park or at least a park so the dogs can have a run and a ‘toilet’ break. Of course, keep doggie bags handy
  • Have a blanket in the car to keep your rear seats as clean as you can
  • Have a towel handy in case you need to wipe dirty feet
  • Keep the dogs comfortable:
    • Watch the temperature in the car. There may be sunshine streaming through the back windows for example so you may need to adjust the cooling vents in the rear
    • Don’t squash the dogs too much with luggage, shopping etc. They need some room to wiggle
    • Have some snuggly toys if your dogs like these

This piece was brought to you by a real living human who felt the wind in their hair and described their adventure in their own words. This is because we rate authenticity and the sharing of great experiences in the natural world – it’s all part of our ethos here at We Are Explorers. You can read more about it in our Editorial Standards.