Top Towns for 2022: Robe is a the perfect holiday idyll all year round

Fleur Bainger writes a love letter to her lifelong holiday escape, the South Australian coastal town of Robe – no. 36 on your list of Top 50 Aussie Towns.

Find the complete list of the Top 50 Aussie Towns here.

You know croissants are important to a small town when no less than three artisan bakers serve its 1542 residents. Robe, on South Australia’s limestone-clawed coast, takes its flaky French pastries seriously – they’re usually sold out before noon.

Demand may have something to do with the 15,000 visitors it greets each summer, though I suspect locals are generally at the front of the queue. Well-placed Robe is about 335 kilometres from Adelaide, 520 kilometres from Melbourne and only a 40-minute drive from the cattle farm where I grew up.

Seasonal highlights in Robe

It was my family’s holiday idyll, loved across every season; a place to run uncontrollably down sand dunes, to walk for miles along spirit level-flat beach and to boogie board in gently frothing white water until our hands turned blue and our feet lost feeling.

Driving Long Beach Robe — Long is the operative
word to describe Long Beach. (Image: Josh Geelan)

Wintertime

For a beachy destination, Robe can be cold, particularly in the ocean. In winter, roaring waves carve cliffs in the dunes – once, the water surged up the beach and engulfed us on a sandy evening stroll.

My dad scrambled free, but my siblings and I copped the icy, direct from-the-Antarctic ocean right up past our shoulders. It was a shock, but the enthralling sense of energy has never left me.

Springtime

Spring is a time for thawing. Coastal wildflowers peep through swaying khaki-green succulents and grasses, winking at the reviving sunshine. Sunsets seem to compete, each evening a richer, deeper saturation of crimson bleeding into fuchsia as the minutes tick by.

Summertime

Summer is when Robe becomes an extrovert, its wine bars, cafes, boutiques and two pubs thronging with holidaymakers who oscillate between the main street and the many beaches rimming the rugged peninsula the town sits on.

Aptly named Long Beach draws the biggest crowds. Stretching for 14 kilometres and open to cars, it’s a magnet for families who set up beach cricket and shade shelters, often staying until they need headlights to return to base.

Long Beach Robe SA — Stroll along Long Beach in the summertime. (Image: South Australian Tourism Commission)

Autumn

I’ve lost count of the hours I’ve spent there. Despite living in Western Australia, I return to Robe each year, now with my own children. Visiting in autumnal April, we are astonished to see a change in the charming town centre, characterised by its row of cream, limestone buildings dating to the 1850s.

Year-round attractions

It seems the COVID shutdown gave Robe time to polish itself into an Instagrammable haven of smallgoods stores, hipster-chic cafes and heritage-listed shops strung with bunting – and not just any bunting.

Cape Dombey Obelisk

This kind is fashioned with the town’s icon, a circa-1855, red-and-white striped monument known as the Cape Dombey Obelisk – a place I visit without fail, to marvel at its ever-receding limestone platform that’s gradually being ravaged by the ocean.

Woodsoak Wines

A string of miniature obelisks hang above wine barrels that serve as leaning posts at Woodsoak Wines ’ convivial cellar door; people cluster outside the corner property, wine glass in hand and conversation on the lips.

An antique wooden bar is rolled out to the courtyard each day, and three of the 10 wines on offer are named after the owners’ children. You can’t help but want to be there.

The Drift Cafe

It’s a similar vibe up the road, at Drift Cafe , where the sourdough from next door’s baked goods haven, Rise of Robe, is served with eggs and avocado among mid-century stonework and whitewashed beams.

Inside Drift Cafe Robe SA — Inside the Drift Cafe in Robe. (Image: South Australian Tourism Commission)

Food at Drift Cafe Robe SA — Serving cafe staples like tacos and fries. (Image: South Australian Tourism Commission)

Karrata Wine Store

A sky-blue kombi is parked in the driveway, its rear window lifted to reveal an espresso machine pumping out takeaways for passers-by. A few steps away, the Karatta Wine Store doubles as a tasting house and art gallery. Like Woodsoak, it’s family-owned, sourcing grapes from vineyards patchworking the countryside just out of town.

Karatta Wines Robe — Karatta Wines doubles as a tasting house and wine store. (Image: Fleur Bainger)

The Caledonian Hotel

Another nearby watering hole, The Caledonian Hotel serves local drops in its beer garden and dark wood, English-style interiors that have been loved for 160 years. Fondly known as ‘The Caly’, it hosts live music and fills to bursting point between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

The historic Caledonian Inn was first built in 1858 by Scotsman Peter McQueen.

Nature highlights

Having little kids, I’m now less barfly and more nature fan. Together, we cross the esplanade bridge over an outlet that links ocean to wetlands.

We search for fragile white crabs and watch feathery green seagrasses wave in the current. Tracing the rise and fall of Robe’s limestone ridge on one of the many paved walking trails, we dart into pine thickets and search for resident seals who pop up in the sometimes turquoise, often teal-hued bay.

Snixley

Before we leave, we follow our curiosity into a new streetwear shop – seemingly incongruous in this town of stone, linen and seashells. It’s run by a local artist who creates the garments’ surf, skate and skull designs under the brand Snixley .

I recognise her – Hadley Johnson – as the daughter of the man who gave me my first job, at what was once the busiest gallery-restaurant in Robe. It was famous for its cinnamon scrolls that no other operator has ever managed to fully replicate (many have tried).

I was 16 and a terrible waitress, but I had a ball. We buy T-shirts, one with a Robe-o-saurus painted in the Obelisk’s colours. It’s become my son’s favourite. And with that, another generation falls for Robe.

Explore more of Robe in our travel guide or find out which other towns made it into your Top 50.

Abandoned mills and forgotten paper plants are finding second lives – and helping redefine a city long underestimated.

Just 15 years ago, Federal Mills was a very different place. Once among the most significant industrial sites in Victoria, the historic woollen mill was one of a dozen that operated in Geelong at the industry’s peak in the mid-20th century, helping the city earn its title as ‘wool centre of the world’. But by the 1960s global competition and the rise of synthetic fabrics led to the slow decline of the industry, and Federal Mills finally shuttered its doors in 2001. Within a few years, the abandoned North Geelong grounds had become makeshift pastoral land, with cows and goats grazing among the overgrown grass between the empty red-brick warehouses. It was a forgotten pocket of the city, all but two klicks from the bustle of the CBD.

Geelong cellar door wine bar — Geelong has shed its industrial identity to become an innovative urban hub with reimagined heritage spaces. (Image: Ash Hughes)

Federal Mills: from forgotten factory to creative precinct

Today, the century-old complex stands reborn. The distinctive sawtooth-roof buildings have been sensitively restored. An old silo is splashed with a bright floral mural, landscapers have transformed the grounds, and the precinct is once again alive with activity. More than 1000 people work across 50-plus businesses here. It’s so busy, in fact, that on a sunny Thursday morning in the thick of winter, it’s hard to find a car park. The high ceilings, open-plan design, and large multi-paned windows – revolutionary features for factories of their time – have again become a drawcard.

Paddock Bakery andPatisserie — Paddock Bakery and Patisserie is housed within the historic wool factory. (Image: Gallant Lee)

At Paddock , one of the precinct’s newer tenants, weaving looms and dye vats have been replaced by a wood-fired brick oven and heavy-duty mixers. Open since April 2024, the bakery looks right at home here; the building’s industrial shell is softened by ivy climbing its steel frames, and sunlight streams through the tall windows. Outside, among the white cedar trees, families at picnic benches linger over dippy eggs and bagels, while white-collar workers pass in and out, single-origin coffee and crème brûlée doughnuts in hand.

Geelong: Australia’s only UNESCO City of Design

Paddock Bakery can be found at Federal Mills. (Image: Gallant Lee)

“A lot of people are now seeing the merit of investing in Geelong,” says Paul Traynor, the head of Hamilton Hospitality Group, which redeveloped Federal Mills. A city once shunned as Sleepy Hollow, and spurned for its industrial, working-class roots and ‘rust belt’ image, Geelong has long since reclaimed its ‘Pivot City’ title, having reinvented itself as an affordable, lifestyle-driven satellite city, and a post-COVID migration hotspot.

And the numbers stand testament to the change. In March 2025, and for the first time in its history, Greater Geelong became Australia’s most popular regional town for internal migration, overtaking Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. Current forecasts suggest Geelong will continue to outpace many other Australian cities and towns, with jobs growing at double the rate of the population.

Tourism is booming, too. The 2023-24 financial year was Geelong and The Bellarine region’s busiest on record, with 6.4 million visitors making it one of the fastest-growing destinations in the country. It’s not hard to see why: beyond the city’s prime positioning at the doorstep of the Great Ocean Road, Geelong’s tenacity and cultural ambition stands out.

As Australia’s only UNESCO City of Design, Geelong is swiftly shaking off its industrial past to become a model for urban renewal, innovation, sustainability and creative communities. The signs are everywhere, from the revitalisation of the city’s waterfront, and the landmark design of the Geelong Library and Heritage Centre and Geelong Arts Centre, to the growing network of local designers, architects and artists, and the burgeoning roster of festivals and events. That’s not even mentioning the adaptive reuse of storied old industrial buildings – from Federal Mills, to Little Creatures’ brewery ‘village’ housed within a 1920s textile mill – or the city’s flourishing food and wine scene.

The rise of a food and wine destination

Restaurant 1915 is housed within a restored former boiler house. (Image: Harry Pope/Two Palms)

Traynor credits now-closed local restaurant Igni, which opened in 2016, as the turning point for Geelong’s hospo industry. “[Aaron Turner, Igni’s chef-patron] was probably the first guy, with all due respect, to raise the bar food-wise for Geelong,” he says. “People now treat it really seriously, and there’s clearly a market for it.” While Igni is gone, Turner now helms a string of other notable Geelong venues, including The Hot Chicken Project and Tacos y Liquor, all within the buzzy, street art-speckled laneways of the CBD’s Little Malop Street Precinct. Many others have also popped up in Igni’s wake, including Federal Mills’ own restaurant, 1915 . Housed within the cavernous boiler house, 1915’s interior is dramatic: soaring, vaulted ceilings with timber beams, exposed brick, a huge arched window. The share plates echo the space’s bold character, playing with contrast and texture, with dishes such as a compressed watermelon tataki, the sweet, juicy squares tempered by salty strands of fried leeks, and charred, smoky snow peas dusted with saganaki on a nutty bed of romesco.

The Woolstore , one of The Hamilton Group’s most recent hospo projects, opened in February. It occupies a century-old riverside warehouse and exudes a more sultry, fine dining ambience. Much like Federal Mills, the blueprint was to preserve the original brickwork, tallowwood flooring and nods to the building’s former life. That same careful consideration extends to the well-versed, affable waitstaff as well as the kitchen. Head chef Eli Grubb is turning out an eclectic mix of ambitious and indulgent mod Oz dishes that deliver: strikingly tender skewers of chicken tsukune, infused with hints of smoke from the parrilla grill, and glazed with a moreish, sweet gochujang ‘jam’; nduja arancini fragrant with hints of aniseed and the earthy lick of sunny saffron aioli; and golden squares of potato pavé, adorned with tiny turrets of crème fraîche, crisp-fried saltbush leaves, and Avruga caviar, to name but a few stand-out dishes.

Woolstore menu — Woolstore’s menu is designed for sharing.

Breathing new life into historic spaces

On the city’s fringe, hidden down a winding side road with little fanfare, lies a long-dormant site that’s being gently revived. Built from locally quarried bluestone and brick, and dating back to the 1870s, the complex of original tin-roofed mill buildings is lush with greenery and backs onto the Barwon River and Buckley Falls; the audible rush of water provides a soothing soundtrack. Fyansford Paper Mill is one of few complexes of its time to survive intact. It feels steeped in history and spellbindingly rustic.

“We were looking for an old industrial place that had some charm and romance to it,” explains Sam Vogel, the owner, director and winemaker at Provenance Wines which moved here in 2018. When he first viewed the building with his former co-owner, it was in such a state of disrepair that the tradie tenant occupying the space had built a shed within it to escape the leaking roof and freezing winter temperatures. “To say it was run down would be an understatement,” he notes. “There was ivy growing through the place; the windows were all smashed. It was a classic Grand Designs project.”

Provenance Wines moved to Fyansford Paper Mill in 2018. (Image: Cameron Murray Photography)

The team has since invested more than a million dollars into their new home. Where paper processing machinery once sat, wine barrels are now stacked. Vaulted cathedral ceilings are strung with festoon lights, and hidden in plain sight lies a shadowy mural by local street artist de rigueur Rone – one of only three permanent works by the artist.

While the award-winning, cool-climate pinot noir, riesling and chardonnay naturally remain a key draw at Provenance, the winery’s restaurant is a destination in itself. Impressed already by whipsmart service, I devour one of the most cleverly curated and faultlessly executed degustations I’ve had in some time. It’s all prepared in a kitchen that is proudly zero-waste, and committed to providing seasonal, ethical and locally sourced meat and produce under head chef Nate McIver. Think free-range venison served rare with a syrupy red wine jus and a half-moon of neon-orange kosho, shokupan with a deeply savoury duck fat jus (a modern Japanese take on bread and drippings), and a golden potato cake adorned with a colourful confetti of dehydrated nasturtiums and tomato powder, and planted atop a sea urchin emulsion.

handcrafted pieces — Bell’s handcrafted functional pieces on display.

The complex is home to a coterie of independent businesses, including a gallery, a jeweller, and its latest tenant, ceramicist Elizabeth Bell, drawn here by the building’s “soul”. “There’s so much potential for these buildings to have new life breathed into them,” says Bell, whose studio is housed within the old pump room. “Even people in Geelong don’t know we’re here,” she says. “It’s definitely a destination, but I like that. It has a really calming atmosphere.”

A Melbourne transplant, Bell now feels at home in Geelong, which offers something Melbourne didn’t. “If this business was in Melbourne I don’t think it would’ve been as successful,” she notes. “It’s very collaborative in Geelong, and I don’t think you get that as much in Melbourne; you’re a bit more in it for yourself. Here it’s about community over competition.”