Where we were camped in Coorong NP wasn’t far from Robe and we had plenty of time so we decided to check out what Robe was all about. It turned out to be a nice beachside holiday town that seemed to be filled with Melbournians for the summer holidays.
We ended up camping in a campground called Long Gully in Little Dip Conservation Park which was less than a 15 minute drive from town.
We soon felt like we were in holiday mode as well as we relaxed our previous habits and found ourselves having numerous ice creams, cafe lunches, pub dinners and even a trip to the cinema – it wasn’t even an open air cinema like in Winton or Broome that we could justify as a cultural or historical experience!
Izzy continued to learn to surf and ended up having three more lessons with the fantastic Charlie who was a great coach. Lindy and I alternated as we figured it would be great to learn a new sport with Izzy. However, it did feel a bit odd being the only adult in a class of 15 or kids under 10! Apparently I missed the memo that parents are supposed to just watch from the beach.
Long Gully was a nice campground which was basically a large open grassed area with no allocated sites. It was close to a number of 4WD tracks along the coast and Robe did seem to have a larger proportion of 4WDs with Maxtrax on the roof than most beach towns. One day we decided to drive back to our campground along the coastal track. It was a beautiful drive with great views of the coast and a couple of tricky sections as the track alternated between running along the beaches themselves and just behind the dunes with some quite soft sections and one or two rocky sections.
Robe’s symbolic attraction seems to be the ‘Obelisk’ a large red and white cairn built from local limestone as a navigational marker for ships – kind of a poor man’s lighthouse. We drove out to have a look but apparently the local council are more interested in stopping everyone walking on the cliffs than letting us get a good view of it.
We also enjoyed an afternoon and evening down on the main beach in Robe, called Long Beach. It reminded us of Cable Beach back in Broome with everyone driving their cars down on to the beach and setting up for the day. We claimed our little bit of sand and played dodgeball until it was time to drive back to town for dinner in the pub.
