Robe, South Australia

They call this area of South Australia the Limestone Coast.  It stretches from Victor Harbour right through to the Victorian border and I am seriously in love with it.  The ocean is that magical turquoise colour and the sands are the whitest of whites.  Some areas have rugged cliff faces and others are as flat as a pancake.  We still have until next week to enjoy this area before we head along the Great Ocean Drive.

Robe is a lovely town that comes alive during the tourist season.  It has become a bit of a destination for the wealthy but still retains its coastal charm.  We are staying at Discovery Parks in Robe and it is quite a nice park with lots of space and at the moment we pretty much have the place to ourselves.

The very first day we arrived we walked into the town centre along the Coastal Trail.  It's quite a long walk - around 6km return I think, but it was quite a lovely walk as we hugged the coastline and even walked across the sand in some places.  But the walk gave us our bearings and we are keen to do more walks, in particular the walk to the Obelisk.

The weather has not improved greatly since our arrival and this morning the wind really picked up but not enough for us to not do the coast walk.  We drove into the town centre to start our walk from there as we had already completed most of the 9km walk the previous day.  There is a well signed path to follow and we set off.

There are quite a few short steep hills to climb up and down but overall the walk is very easy.  Of course we stop numerous times for photos, in fact I can't stop taking photos!  It is just so beautiful.  Even though the wind is blowing quite feriouscly the sun is out and at one stage Philip took off his jacket.  I did not.  There are some magnificent rock formations sitting just off shore and there are the tell tale signs of wind erosion right along the coastline.  When we reach the Obelisk we find it is closed to the public because it is sitting very precariously on eroded rock and to us it looks like it could fall into the ocean at any time.

We continue our walk around the point to the jetty.  Of course we have to walk to the end even though the wind almost blows us into the ocean!  I think we have walked along every jetty we have ever come to on our travels!

Our last stop on the walk is at the harbour where we watch the Lobster boats arrive back into port to unload their haul.  We have yet to feast on the Southern Rock Lobster but will look forward to it when we visit Port MacDonnell near Mount Gambier.  As we watch the lobster boat come back into the harbour we are reminded of our Lobster Pot Pull tour that we went on at Kalbarri in WA last year.  We loved the tour but the best part was the lobsters that we got to keep!

The 7km walk took us around 90 minutes with all our stops and it was certainly one of the loveliest walks we have done.  It was coffee time for us and I had found a place called Mahalia Coffee where they roast their own beans.  What a lovely surprise this place was.   Not only did we have a very decent cup of coffee but I managed to get myself a small Christmas tree (stands about 18") and some gorgeous fairy lights, so we are set for Christmas in the van. 

We still have another full day here in Robe and tomorrow we will do the tourist drives to Kingston SE and Beachport. This afternoon we hope to take a short drive to the Beacon Hill Lookout and on to Nora Creina Bay that promises to be one of loveliest.  Until my next blog.......