About Robe
Robe is one of the most charming and unspoilt holiday destinations in Australia. Located on Guichen Bay, it combines a dramatic rocky, windswept coastline with a number of attractive and secluded beaches including the beautiful, 17 km long Long Beach. It is notable for its sophisticated town centre which not only has a wealth of historic buildings (the Heritage Trail lists more than fifty) but also offers fine dining with great local wines and chic cafes with very classy coffee. The real charm and character of Robe can best be experienced by walking the original streets which have been little altered since the 1860s. It is a very special town with a seductive ambience which has been well protected from over development (sourced from the Aussie Towns website – click for more).
We had originally planned to stay at Kingston SE but the caravan park was right on the beach which was full of rank smelling rotting seaweed so we moved onto Robe which turned out to be a great choice. What a lovely place Robe is, with so many historic buildings and cafés.
We selected the Robe Discovery CP located just out of town on long beach (maplink).
A lot of historical buildings were erected in the mid 1800’s and have been restored to their original splendor by the owners and historical society. Robe also has a lot of very expensive looking holiday homes and large mariner with plenty of money moored there.
Took the usual coastal drive to check out things and found the Chinese memorial erected to commemorate 16,500 Chinese who landed at Robe between 1856-1858 and then walked 200 miles (320 km) to the Victorian goldfields in search of gold.
We also discovered the Robe Obelisk, erected erected in 1855 to assist ships and their navigators to the safe entrance into Guichen Bay. The obelisk is a famous landmark and is of special local historical significance.
Beachport
A day-trip to Beachport, 49kms south-east of Robe (maplink), is a really nice little town to visit, with it’s interesting street art and beautiful stone buildings and beyond the town centre it is a typical seaside resort with a relaxed beach holiday atmosphere.
Beachport town art
Woakwine Cutting
On the way back to Robe we discovered Woakwine Cutting (maplink) which is an outstanding example of engineering. Accomplished by just two men, a D7 tractor was used to make a cutting through the Woakwine Range to drain swampland for farming.
The project began in May 1957 and took three years to complete. The length of the cutting is one kilometre and the depth at the deepest point is 28.34 metres. The width of the cutting at the top is 36.57 metres and three metres at the bottom. There were 276,000 cubic metres of material removed using a new D7 tractor over a total of 5000 hours.
Woakwine is an Aboriginal name, meaning elbow or bent arm and refers to the shape of the large watercourse near the Woakwine homestead.
