Someone had forgotten to tell us it was Friday night and this was Robe’s Annual Village Fair weekend with live bands outdoors Friday night and all Saturday, and hosted by a number of local wineries.

Not surprising then that accommodation at short notice was hard to find, here are the main motels worth trying:

• Robetown Motor Inn – a modern looking motel on the main road as you enter the town
• Robe Harbour View Motel – boasts views of both harbour and the bay while being close to shops
• Robe Haven Motel – older motel in quiet area but close to shops and has quite large rooms – this is where we ended up and it served our needs very well so we stayed the second night

The weather was still very bleak on Saturday with storms, wind and torrential rains still persisting:

We decided that we would stay an extra night in Robe and take it easy, that way we were guaranteed on a Saturday night bed, we were able to have a break from driving as well as sample some of the local wines, and we were able to wait for the storms to pass, and get to catch up on some local culture and some rock bands – any more excuses why we should stay? 🙂

After a nice brunch at the Wild Mulberry Cafe, we took a short drive to Beachport then Canunda National Park where I hoped to see the massive shifting sand dunes but it seems one needed to get down and dirty and do some real 4WD work over sand dunes to get to see these, so instead we opted for a short walk to the beach between showers – big mistake – I have never had such a swarm of bush flies around me as on that little walk (we don’t usually have a problem with bush flies in Victoria until mid-November when the first hot winds drive them down from the NSW cattle farms):

We decided that was enough driving so headed back to the motel in Robe and walked down to the Fair to watch the bands from the safety of the marquee:

Did I mention it was raining??

Luckily we were able watch the band from a vantage point within the marquee which just so happened to be close to the stand for Cape Jaffa Wines – I thought I had better sample a few glasses of their Sav Blanc on our “day of rest”.

Low Rider rock band:

And, we stayed for the night to watch Sth Australian band, The Screaming Jets, belt out their high energy rock, and they played a bit of AC DC and Steppenwolf:

The Panasonic GH-1 Micro Four Thirds camera was fantastic at the Fair (if you kept it dry!) – the HD videos were great – the only problem – the very loud bass from the band was too much for the camera’s sound recording algorithms and unfortunately, I didn’t bring my Zoom H4N digital sound recorder to allow dubbing onto the videos.

Sunday was time to head home to Melbourne another 700km or so trip – but an easy one.

A word of warning – very few shops or petrol stations are open Sunday morning in rural areas so you better be prepared – we had to wait until Hamilton in Victoria to find a decent petrol station and cafe for brunch.

But they were not all like this:

More photos and maps of trip can be found here.