Robe........Really?!!

Family Friendly Beach at Robe

SO................off we went to Robe, through the little town of Tailem Bend, albeit not as small as Doug remembered it. It is funny how many things his memory of in SA are totally off the mark – he does seem to forget that it is quite a few years since he lived here, and even then, he generally traversed the land while working and paid very little attention to the countryside itself.

As we travelled through Kingston SE and eastward towards Robe, we were kept company by The Coorong; The Coorong, DD tells me, is a body of fresh water running parallel to the ocean for some hundred ks. The Coorong is fed by the Murray River and runs into Lake Alexandrina and Lake Albert. I have to own up to a certain amount of scepticism here, as the water did look like salt to me, but DD is adamant, so I will have to bow to his superior knowledge. For those literary buffs amongst you, DD tells me that the Australian novel Storm Boy was written around and about The Coorong.
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Glimpses of the Coorong from the Car

The countryside along the way was generally flat and uninspiring. Fairly typical coastal stuff really – low lying and very scrubby! This was the first time I was unimpressed with the scenery. It is hard to express the difference between WA and SA countryside. Generally both have undulating golden wheat and stock paddocks, reaching away into the far distance. The WA colours tho’ tend to be vivid and often stark, whereas in SA the colours tend to be muted in comparison. The sky here is a softer blue and the wheat fields are a more gentle gold. The trees around the Flinders are majestic and huge, whereas most farming country in WA has smaller more scrubby trees such as Mallee. In WA the fields drift away into nothingness, in SA there is almost always a line of blue and purple ranges in the distance. If I had to categorise, I would say that in WA the countryside is vibrantly striking whereas in SA it is softly beautiful. Bit like the difference between an oil colour and a water colour I would say!

Watercolour Hues of The Coorong

In due course, the countryside greened up and started looking a little more interesting and we lumbered into the seaside township of Robe some 340 ks south east of Adelaide. Typically hilly and windy roads wound past a strangely ‘soapy’ lake and a couple of other small ponds, and into bedlam! They say in the Tourist Guide that the population of Robe is around 1200, what they don’t say in that same publication is that population must expand to somewhere around 10,000 during school holidays. The main street was a manic mix of cafes, eateries, clothes shops, souvenir shops, curiosity shops, general yuppyish style establishments and shock horror, people!!! What had we managed to get ourselves into? We avoid these tourist traps like the plague. Oh well, for some reason our brains left at that point and we continued on searching for our planned destination at the Family Park Caravan Park. It was not particularly easy to find but eventually we did track it down, overshooting the mark somewhat. We pulled the rig over to the side of the road and I phoned the erstwhile establishment to see what our chances would be. You see, the park had been recommended to us and so....., well - a very cheerful and pleasant young woman answered the phone and when I enquired if we could have a really nice bay with ocean views – one that would suit a largish rig, she went to have a look. My request for 1 week met with considerable mirth, but she did say she had a lovely bay for us (due to a sudden unexpected departure) and we could have it for 4 days. Great!! With some difficulty DD managed to turn the van around in the rather narrow road and back we went. The same lovely young woman served us and with beautiful smiles and wonderful customer service gave us our pass numbers and directions to our new bay. Hmmmm, the roads inside the park were narrow, windy and steep. Vans and cars were crammed in to every little crevice and cars were parked largely on the already conjested roads. Oh well, we had told her our van was 23ft so she understood we needed a little room, so on we went; well we entered our road which was a dead end of some 40 metres. In this short road there must have been somewhere around 20 bays. Our particular bay had a steep ramp to one side, complete with hand rails and rock face sides etc. On the other side was a van which was encroaching a couple of feet onto ‘our’ site. Immediately across from our bay were two large camps which due to the multiple tents, canoes, boats, cars, bikes, kids, rabbits and goats taking up every spare inch right up to the curb. Oh alright, there were no rabbits and goats, but there could have been in amongst all that chaos. The story with Robe, we had already been told by the lovely young woman at the counter, was a regular group of Victorian families flock there every Christmas and they all consider it their home away from home. These families are exactly that, young upwardly mobile parents of multitudes of exuberant children and hormonally disturbed adolescents, all of whom transfer everything from their upwardly mobile homes to their seaside campsites.

Zed & Jezabelle crammed in to our site

Now, I know there are multitudes of very competent couples out there who would probably not have turned a hair at the prospect of getting Jezabelle into that tiny tight bay, and you know we have travelled a little now and are not too bad at manoeuvring Jezzy. We were however,to put it mildly, somewhat nervous. Did I mention how shallow these bays are? The bays could only have been 26ft deep – we take 25ft from one end to the other! There was a very high rock wall behind each bay as the whole park is steeply terraced. Due to the shallow and narrow nature of all the bays, everyone is compelled to park their car in front of their van. This meant that the road was littered with large 4wds. There was not even room to drive the van down the road in order to back up and into the bay. Oh well, we employed our wonderful fail safe van parking method and with a surprisingly small effort we were safely in the bay. Admittedly two of our neighbours were kind enough to move their cars so that we could move but it wasn’t a bad effort. Have I told you what our magic fail safe method is? No.............ah......it is a male female thing folks. Up until fairly recently we would do it the traditional way with DD behind the wheel and yours truly with 2 way in hand giving succinct and intelligent suggestions and directions. Of course a fair bit of wild gesticulating would be in order as well. I have to say, the wild gesticulating happened when DD inevitably completely ignored my clever instructions and tried to out-think me and Do It His Way. This meant that it did (just sometimes you understand) take a little while to get the van in place. The longer it took, the wilder my gesticulating would become and the louder and louder my under-breath muttering would become and the more DD would ignore my instructions. I can’t understand how he could misinterpret that particular hand signal dears!!



Picturesque Coastline at Beachport

 Anyway, one fine day after one of these enlivening sessions, I had a bright idea – yes, once in a blue moon I have one of those – I would jump behind the wheel and DD would do the wild gesticulating. We do this when we hitch up and we have that down to a fine art. Why does this work so well? Because I actually follow DD’s instructions! I don’t profess to know the first thing about backing a van and so rely 100% on DD ‘s instructions. I do not try to second guess his instructions, I do not look at the back of the van and think that he is wrong, I don’t believe in my deepest phsyche that I am way more intelligent than him (not that I would admit to anyway), I don’t think I can do it better - I just simply do what I am told. I do, before we begin, point out any odds and sods that I think are important, just in case DD’s eagle eye misses them, and then I just obey, obey, obey. Essentially, aside from my blind obedience, Doug is far more patient than me and is prepared to run around the van looking at it from all sides. Me, I tend to position myself in one visible position and then direct. Doug’s way is far better than mine and being a woman, I obey far better than he. This way we capitalise on our individual capacities and it is a winner.

Once in, we could not be complacent, as we knew that in 4 days time we could have to extricate ourselves, and as we had a rock wall and railing on our right side and our exit was on the right, we knew it was going to be a tall order. Anyway, we decided to take it all in our stride and enjoy Robe while we were there. Sadly that didn’t happen. DD became morose and gloomy and that mood stayed with us the whole 4 days we were in Robe. A caravan can be a very small place when one of the occupants is not happy. I tried to overcome DD’s mood, but the obvious antagonism wafting in from the van on our left side (you know the one encroaching onto our bay) combined with DD’s poor mood and the whole thing just was not a good scene.



Placid Scenes at Southend

 Speaking of good scenes, we had none. Due to the chronic over-crowding at the park all we had were small glimpses of sparkling turquoise ocean between all the canvas and car top canoes. Our unhappy neighbours were peed off with us because Zed was parked in front and off to one side of our van as we had literally nowhere else to put him. They had a far smaller van and had managed to squeeze their vehicle down the side of the van (probably due to pinching some of our space) and had set up a table across the A Frame at the front of their van. Our vehicle really made it far less pleasant for them to sit out the front of their van and sunbake. Yes, they were pom- sorry English middle aged sunworshippers who should have known better. They were the sort who would stop any unsuspecting passers by and regale them with tales tall and true of their various worldwide travels, in very loud and extravagant voices. Not us tho’ – all we received from our hostile neighbours were wounded and poisonous looks. The woman was the main offender, although she did eventually bend a little and ask me about our washing machine. The gentleman seemed a little more innocuous as he was just mainly interested in bronzing his tall lanky middle aged bod – all of it except the very small part covered by his budgie-smugglers...........I kid you not ladies, he wore budgie smugglers and looked a great deal like our national treasure, muso come polly, Peter Garrett. Something like a big bronze pretzel with a bandanna wrapped tightly around its middle. The lady was a good match for Jeanie Little in her better days. Oh well, not everyone can be wonderful I suppose, least of all me.



Stunning Rock Pools at Southend



Coastal Scenes at Beachport

Robe just turned DD off completely and he pretty much refused to have anything to do with the place. We did however, take a nice drive along the coast to visit both Southend and Beachport, both of which we thought were lovely. There is a coastal tourist drive along the coast at Beachport which provides some stunning perspectives of the Limestone Coast. We wondered why two allegedly intelligent folk like ourselves had even contemplated staying at such a busy and packed park when these two delightful alternatives had been ‘just down the road’.

I must say a few words in defence of poor old Robe before we leave there. We believe that off peak it is probably delightful, and without all the hordes a pleasant place to stay. We can see what the attraction is for families as the beach is child friendly and the town has everything you could possibly wish for including a little cinema.

I suspect the spectre of removing ourselves from that tight spot coloured DD’s enjoyment and mood. Finally the big day came and we had to extricate ourselves. It was somewhat of a relief to find that our unfriendly neighbours were also leaving that day as were the young couple directly opposite.

Our neighbours left first (she did let on that they generally had the park ‘man’ get them out), with DD’s guidance. The bloke across the road came down with a bad case of flat battery and it took quite a while for DD to get his car started for him. Once it was going he moved it to one side and as he had cleared a large part of his site, we were able to simply drive out to our left and then back into our neighbours site and drive out. It was a huge relief, as had our neighbours not left, I was going to have to back the van out (up hill) quite some distance between all the cars parked alongside the road. I am just so glad I didn’t have to do that. I might add, DD did all the backing and filling required to get us out of that predicament and he did it without any help from me or any wild gesticulating. He is a very clever boy sometimes. Don’t tell him I said so tho’ will you.

Beachport Jetty

We often boast that we have never stayed at a Caravan Park we did not enjoy, Robe has spoiled that record now, as we definitely did not enjoy our stay there. We worry now that most of the coastal towns will be this way until the school holidays are over. Fortunately that is now only a couple of weeks away.

From Robe we moved upwards and onwards to the lovely SA town of Penola, but more about that next time.

For now, be patient with each other and generous with the praise. Stephanie.