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Highlights of Gawler, South Australia and a Tutorial in "Aussie Culture".

Gawler is the last train stop on the Adelaide northern train line, just before the Barossa Valley in South Australia.

Apart from being the earliest country town settled in 1839, historically Gawler doesn't seem to be significant for very much.

It has a lot of heritage and a lot of old buildings that are "renowned for their architecture and cast iron lace work". The most magnificent of these buildings are arguably the towns 10 pubs, that were built during the settlement of Gawler.

If you are an Australian you will understand that this is an exceptional thing for a town to be famous for, because we love our pubs, especially the old ones with the "regular crowd" where you always have someone to talk to (a bit like "Cheers" - everyone knows your name).

If you decide to come to Gawler and you're up for a "pub crawl" (ie: consuming alcohol in many public houses during one evening), first you need to drop by the Visitor's Information Centre where officially they call the pubs "Historic Hotels" and ask for the Heritage Hotel Tour brochure.

This will give you a map and photo of each pub... I mean hotel which will be useful for the first half of the tour. Whether or not it will be useful for the second half depends on how many you "put away" during the first half and how good your reading ability remains.

All the hotels are walking/staggering distance from each other so you don't have to worry about driving. Probably a good idea to organize accommodation before you're inebriated... I mean tired so you can go straight to your room afterward and crash without any reception staff having to cope with you.

If being sober is more your thing and you like horses, Gawler is famous for it's horse racing. Every 2 years it has a horse festival and The Gawler Cup is run in April and May.

Other than that there's shopping. Every shop you need is in Gawler including Coles, Woolworths and Big W (I heard a rumor they're getting a Target as well). If you like big commercial shopping centres the nearest one is a 5 minute drive away (or about the same on the train) at Munno Para. If you don't like living in cities, but like being near shops Gawler is the place for you.

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