Discover Robe Preview

Standing on top of a small sand hill overlooking the sea is a small, five-sided building built in 1863 as a Customs House for officers collecting taxes on goods coming into South Australia from the other Australian Colonies.

It also became the official clearing point for the last of the 16,000 Chinese migrants and their ship’s cargo who landed in Robe heading for the Victorian goldfields.

It only operated as a Customs House for 25 years then was used as Council Chambers for the next 80 years.

It is currently a Maritime Museum, in the care of the Robe Branch of the National Trust of South Australia.

This charming house, the first to be built in Robe in 1847, has played an important role in the town's history.

It was constructed as the home for the first two Government Residents of Robe, Captain Gerald Villiers Butler who lived there until 1850 and Captain Charles Phillip Brewer who succeeded him in the position and renovated it and made it a more substantial dwelling eventually becoming the official Centre for the administration of government in South East South Australia until 1869.

Afterwards, in 1875 Robe House became a private school, and later a doctor’s surgery, a holiday home and is now 5 fully self-contained bed and breakfast apartments.

Belonging to one of the oldest towns in South Australia, there are compelling tales lying buried beneath the hundreds of gravestones and towering memorials in Robe's historical section of its cemetery.

Recognised as having national heritage significance, the cemetery reflects the area's rich and diverse history and contains the graves of pioneering pastoralists, men and women drowned at sea, and emigrant settlers from across the world who came to Robe to make new lives.

Discover some of these fascinating stories in the videos below.

It’s hard to imagine that these unassuming sheep yards led to an exciting world first discovery on the cause and treatment of a wasting condition in animals known as ‘coast disease’.

Local farmer Robert Dawson and his son Victor provided their land for the field research by the CSIRO and for forty years drenched their sheep with a solution of trace elements, and later by orally administering a small metal pellet to help scientists discover the cause and cure of this debilitating disease.

Robert was awarded an MBE for his commitment and dedication in 1950. He died in 1976 at the age of 99 years.