Mount Torrens Heritage Township

Blink on the road between Lobethal and Birdwood and you could miss one of South Australia's most remarkable streetscapes. Mount Torrens — laid out in 1853 on land settled by the Dunn family in the 1840s — has kept its nineteenth-century bones almost perfectly intact, and in 2002 the whole township was declared a State Heritage Area, one of only seventeen in the state.

Walk Townsend Street and the evidence is everywhere: more than thirty heritage stone buildings, most standing by 1870, many with their original outbuildings, garden walls and stone-pitched drains still in place. The town grew up serving bullock drays on the road to the Murray River trade at Mannum, and when the traffic moved elsewhere, Mount Torrens simply stopped changing — which is precisely its charm. A self-guided heritage trail (there is a free app, Discover Mount Torrens) tells the stories behind the facades.

The town has found a second life as a waypoint on the Amy Gillett Bikeway, which follows the old railway corridor through town and now continues to Birdwood. Roll in on two wheels, wander the heritage trail, then carry on to the Blumberg Hotel for a counter lunch.