Eyre Peninsula

The Eyre Peninsula juts into the Southern Ocean like a wedge between Spencer Gulf and the Great Australian Bight, and its isolation is exactly its appeal. This is where Australia's most prized seafood comes from — Port Lincoln tuna and oysters, razor-fresh abalone and kingfish pulled from cold, clean water — and where you can swim with wild sea lions on a sand spit barely forty metres wide.

Baird Bay, on the remote western shore, is one of the few places in the world where you can enter the water with Australian sea lions and New Zealand fur seals without a net or enclosure between you. They'll spiral around you like underwater dogs, tugging at fins and doing backflips to show off. It's the kind of animal encounter that upstages most zoo experiences.

Point Labatt hosts the only mainland sea lion colony on the continent. The cliffs at the Head of Bight, between May and October, offer front-row viewing of Southern Right Whale mothers with calves in the protected bight below. Port Lincoln, the region's main hub, is known as the Tuna Capital of the world — the local seafood, eaten at the waterfront, is among the freshest and cheapest in Australia.