Our final destination Robe sits on South Australia’s rugged Limestone Coast. Yes this is a wine district too! Robe might be little but it does have quite a remarkable history. It is Tuesday our 9th day away and after yesterday’s long drive decide to spend the day in catching up on the ever growing stream of emails and take a tour of Robe’s historic spots tomorrow to add visuals to the towns history.
The town overlooks picturesque Guichen Bay, first charted in 1802 by French explorer Nicolas Baudin, as part of a major scientific expedition approved by Napoleon Bonaparte. Baudin spent some time off and on the South Australian coast, leaving a rock carved with his name on it on Penneshaw beach, Kangaroo island. Baudin originally named the bay Ances des Albatross, but when Baudin died on the way home, the French decided to name the bay to honour one of their admirals, the Comte de Guichen.
It is thought that the Bunganditj and Meintangk indigenous peoples occupied this area for as long as 30,000 years. Shell middens can still be seen in the Little Dip Conservation Park, just outside of Robe, concluding that a large and stable population lived along this coastline. Sustained by diverse and plentiful local food sources such as shellfish and muntries. Muntries are a prolific bush food, the aborigines call them emu apples or native cranberries. The berries grow on a low growing shrub found on the south coast of Australia. When ripe the berries are green with a red tinge and have the flavour of spicy apples.
Seal fur hunters working out of Tasmania visited Guichen Bay long before the colony of South Australia started in 1836. The famous overlander named Charles Bonney who had pioneered the overland muster of sheep from Victoria to Adelaide, passed through with a mob of cattle in 1839. In 1846 the town grew out of a survey commissioned by the South Australian Government by Thomas Burr seeking an ideal port location in order to meet the needs of pastoralists settling in the area.
The town gained its name from the then unpopular Governor Frederick Holt Robe, who inspected the area in January 1846 and had the final say on Guichen Bay as the port site. Three months later, the towns layout had been drawn up and the first allotments sold at auction by October. Within days, a small party of government officials arrived, led by distinguished British solder Captain Gerald Villiers Butler, his appointment as Government Resident saw him take charge of an area covering some 6000 square kilometres. Butler had brought along Charlotte his pregnant wife, four children, three servants, a nanny and a female cook. They had traveled by sea on the cutter Lapwing but due to rough weather remained on the ship while the men set up camp on shore. Charlotte, her children and female retinue spent a number of days aboard the Lapewing until the weather abated allowing them to be rowed ashore to their new home that consisted of a tent on the foreshore.
The town quickly became populated from the east by Scottish and Irish migrants travelling by bullock cart. New arrivals from London came by ship on an 8 week perilous journey by sea.
After a slow start, Robe became one of the most important ports on Australia’s southern coast, serving a large hinterland that stretched into western Victoria along the path that we had taken to arrive here. In the late 1850s, more than 15,000 Chinese landed in the bay on their way to the Victorian goldfields, as part of one of the most remarkable treks in Australian history. They travelled via Robe after an edict by the Victorian governor placed a tax of £10 per head on all Chinese immigrants landing at ports in Victoria. In recent times Chinese migrants have re-enacted the walk in memory of those determined gold diggers that died along the way.
In the ten year period up to 1866, wool worth more than £1 million also passed through the port, on its way to British mills. Shipping merchant George Ormerod, one of the most prominent figures in the development of the town handled most of the transactions. Originally from Lancaster, England he established his business in 1853, operating a warehouse and store on the Royal Circus, that served as a roundabout for teamsters delivering wool from outlying stations. During peak season, their wagons often stretched several kilometres out of town while they waited to unload.
Today Robe’s Royal Circus serves as the towns central location commemorating Robe’s maritime heritage, and shipwrecks that occurred in the treacherous waters off the Limestone Coast. Taking pride of place are bronze bust sculptures of Baudin and one of England’s most famous navigators, Matthew Flinders, who visited the bay a few days after Baudin. They stand alongside a cannon believed to have come from the Dutch ship Koning Willem II, that came to grief during a storm in the bay in 1857, resulting in the tragic loss of 16 crew members.
Overlooking the Royal Circus is the Customs House, one of more than 70 heritage listed buildings in the town and surrounding area.
The list includes Robe’s most famous landmark, the Obelisk, erected in 1855 to guide ships into the bay. The Obelisk stands proudly on the point of Cape Dombey and was constructed by local builder George Shivas at a cost of £230. The Obelisk created a landmark to navigate the entrance into Guichen Bay and to store rocket fired lifesaving equipment for stricken ships. Later it assisted passing ships with navigation, standing at a height of 12 metres it is easily visible 20 kilometres out to sea. In 1862, after complaints by the Captains that the then white Obelisk could be difficult to differentiate from Long Beach’s white sand hills, the authorities repainted it in alternate red and white bands. Today the Obelisk is in danger of falling into the sea, local authorities have decided not to attempt to save it at this time.
The town’s first summer holiday home, Karatta, designed by colonial architect Edward Angas Hamilton, is a grand two-storey home built in 1862 by Henry Jones from nearby Binnum station just so his wife could escape the inland heat. In the early 1870s, Governor Sir James Ferguson leased the house as a summer residence for his family. Binnum sheep station covered 10 thousand hectares of land primarily used for sheep grazing.
As the first Catholic priest appointed permanently to serve the region, Father Julian Tenison Woods frequented Robe often. Aside from serving his parishioners, the talented scientist spent many hours exploring the countryside on horseback, with a geological hammer tucked into his saddle bag alongside his bible. Woods served the area for ten years from 1857, overseeing the building of St Mary’s Star of the Sea, one of the oldest Catholic churches in South Australia.
Originally based in Penola, he famously encouraged a young governess by the name of Mary MacKillop to open a school and establish the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart. As previously mentioned Mary became Canonised in 2010 as Australia’s first saint.
Robe’s Bank, this fine Italianate building, pictured below, constructed of stone with stucco masonry, was designed by Edmund Wright, the architect for some prominent buildings in Adelaide. Built in 1859 for the Bank of South Australia, that opened the following year. Robe historian Kathleen Bermingham wrote that “this was one of the largest banking institutions outside Adelaide, with a succession of popular managers and accountants”.
Cobb & Co also ran horse drawn coach services to Robe, the Bush inn licensed between 1861 & 1871. Just one of several roadside inns that served teamsters who bought wool bales into Robe piled high on bullock & horse drays during the busiest years of the port of Robe. At some time during the Cobb & Co era the inn became licensed as the Newton Arms.
Despite promising beginnings, Robe fell into decline within a few decades of settlement because of the establishment of rival ports and railway systems that bypassed the town, and struggles in the pastoral sector. Then in the early 1900s, the town reinvented itself as a holiday destination, promoted as the Sanatorium of South Australia, because of the therapeutic value of its sea air and salt waters. As more families acquired motor cars in the 1920s, Robe became a popular spot for ‘motor camping’, with a new progress association setting up the first official camping ground, nestled in dips and hollows between the town and the West Beach.
In 1921 after the Great War, the citizens of Robe came together to honor the war dead of their town and district by commissioning a war memorial. Like most country towns they had lost men in this horrific war. War memorials all over the country from the largest to the smallest towns began being erected and they still stand as a reminder today of the lives lost in both wars.
The late 1930s saw a change in fortune for the area’s farmers when scientists carrying out research near Robe confirmed the cause and worked out a cure for coast disease, a wasting condition that affects livestock grazed in coastal areas. The CSIRO established a field station on Bob Dawson’s small farm after he volunteered to set aside some land and sheep. In a breakthrough of international importance, the research confirmed the condition to be caused by deficiencies in cobalt and copper. Bob received an MBE in 1950 for his contribution. He and his son Vic assisted with monitoring and writing reports for more than 40 years.
In the 1940s, the local economy further improved when commercial fishing took off. Robe is well known for southern rock lobster, but gummy sharks provided the first commercial catch. The sharks livers, provided an oil rich in vitamins to fortify military rations during World War Two. Lobster came into its own in the 1950s, when the fishing fleet grew substantially and exports began to the United States. The lobster we South Australians call Crayfish is one of the towns most sort after tasting experiences.
Another new era emerged in the 1960s, when surfing came to Robe. First held in 1968, the Robe Easter Surfing Classic is recognised as one of the oldest continuously held surfing competitions in the world, most likely only second to Victoria’s famous Bell’s Beach.
Today Robe is a trendy vibrant holiday town that has retained all the old world charm of yesteryear, mixed in with modern facilities. Hundreds of visitors descend on the town from Adelaide and surrounding districts during the summer months filling the Air-BnB’s and holiday rentals. The Main Street is filled with restaurants, cafes, surf shops and beach themed decor or clothing stores. The town has two old pubs the Caledonian inn, our choice for dinner tonight and the Robe Hotel over looking the bay.
Tomorrow we travel north to Stirling some 321 kilometres (199miles) via the scenic south coast road that takes us along the Coorong, a series of salt lagoons that stretch for 140 kilometres (87 miles). To be continued……