IT occurred to me last night that South Australia is this country's least interesting state.
Let me qualify that, it's Australia's least interesting state when travellers are listing reasons to plan a holiday
But that's what I was thinking last night, today I have a very different opinion.
Of course there's Adelaide and Kangaroo Island, but I've discovered another reason to visit this state is because Australia's red heart is literally at the capital city's back door.
To visit the icons of the Outback in NSW, Queensland, the Northern Territory and WA you have to fly and/or drive for long hours.
But to find red dirt in this part of the world you only need to do an hour-long flight from Melbourne, and then drive a couple of dozen kilometres from the city limits and you're walking in the footsteps of some of our greatest explorers.
So, when you think about it, South Australia is pretty unique -- underrated rather than uninteresting -- because it doesn't take long to clear the city and suburbs and see the wide-open spaces where salt bushes grow like stubble.
I'm in South Australia doing an APT tour of the state's Outback, which includes a visit to Lake Eyre and Wilpena Pound, so that's why I'm thinking so much about this place's cool rating.
I've been wanting to see the Flinders Ranges for years -- since Dad and I drove home from Perth in 2002 and gazed at the distant mountains as we motored through Port Augusta -- but now I'm here it's not at all what I expected.
I thought the feature would be more like the Blue Mountains, and perhaps it will be when we leave the bitumen and start climbing, but from the asphalt of the B83 road north its looks more like a desert out here.
Long lines of red gums mark the dry creek beds, clumps of olive green spinifex and salt bushes dot the vast stretches of red dirt, and the bald hills at the northern end of Flinders' mountains take on a nondescript grey colour as they recede to the horizon.
Today we're driving from Port Augusta to Marree and the view has been enchanting.
If you can't imagine it, think back to the last time you saw Gallipoli.
Remember the start of the movie, when Archie was still at home with his family, and he raced through the family property without shoes while a jackaroo galloped towards the homestead on his horse.
That sunburnt landscape is exactly what I'm looking out the right side of the APT bus.
Low scrub and dry creek beds, red dirt and stoic plants, and the western slopes of the peaks that make up the walls of Wilpena Pound filled my window for a couple of hundred kilometers.
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