DAOSA and Terre à Terre

South Australia’s wine story includes many well-worn tales of adventures into the unknown, maddening enterprise and celebrated family sagas. But then there are the more secret histories, which live on today in wines that reflect their colourful stories. Here, we explore the lesser-known side to South Australia’s iconic wine industry. It is thought the area’s caves were formed about one million years ago, just inland of where the shoreline was at the time, before the sea level dropped and caves were completely drained approximately 800,000 years ago, and gradual uplift during the Pleistocene period pushed the ocean 100 kilometres away from the Naracoorte Ranges. These caves also contain fossils from large marsupials such as giant koalas or kangaroos, with new research suggesting some of them in the Whalebone cave are almost 300,000 years old; the animals stranded in the cave when the entrance collapsed, sealing them off from being degraded by sun, weather or disturbed by intruders.