19/06/2026
In part two of our series on walking South Australia by public transport, life member Mike gives some additional detail on bussing to bushwalks, along with few travel-related tales.
“I love it when you can set off and complete linear walks by simply catching a bus or train at either end. You can often do so for interstate walks, most recently for me, Victoria’s Great Dividing Trail (and now with free transport!) and coast-to-coasting Tasmania. Walkers of WA’s two most popular long walks (Bibbulmun and Coast to Coast) are spoilt with travel options, with buses to all towns linked to Perth directly or via the Bunbury train service. But it’s a bit different here and this is largely due to our small rural populations.
With the single exception of the vastly expanded bus services to God’s great waiting rooms of Goolwa and Victor Harbour, bus services to most of the more distant regional areas have declined in recent decades, and this due to both the serious decline of many rural populations and our strong preference to travel by car. (Minnipa and Peterborough are towns that I know well which now have far smaller populations than formerly while Leigh Creek’s population has fallen from 2,500 to less than a hundred.)
Stark evidence of the decline in services (and the need for bus companies to reduce costs) is the current once-a-week only bus to the west coast (Kimba-Ceduna) and the move of the Port Augusta bus stop from a centrally located bus terminal/café of a decade or so ago to the front of a very un-central service station. Despite all this, there are still opportunities to take the bus option for a good number of day, weekend and more extended walks.”
SA PUBLIC TRANSPORT OPTIONS FOR BUSHWALKERS: read the full article in ABW (Adelaide Bushwalkers) Tandanya Magazine.
https://www.adelaidebushwalkers.org/blog/bushwalk-sa-by-bus/
