Community & Business
19 December, 2024
Rowing around the world and back
KATH Robinson doesn’t move like an 85-year-old. She doesn’t look like an 85-year-old. Tall, graceful, she fits her home, which is peppered with interesting literature; art from around the world; an uninterrupted view over the water and hills of Lake Tinaroo - which edges the bottom of her property; and here and there, bundles of medals, ribbons, and flags from her competition rowing, among other sports.
She laughs when I say there must be something in the water here, admitting sheepishly that when she signed up for rowing at the Yungaburra club 16 years ago, she had told them she was 69 and the secretary had said, “You’re not!”
“But you work hard, eat good food and keep active, which is so important, really,” she says with a philosophical shrug.
Like her rowing teammate and friend Renate Wendel (featured last week in The Express Newspaper) Kath leads a busy life revolving around her community. Her childhood and growing up in the region and her love of travel are a fascinating window into an eventful and changing world.
“I was born three days before the war (WWII) was declared, and Renate was born a year later in 1940. I was in Cairns – it was much safer,” she said, alluding to Renate’s East Berlin background.
“All the American soldiers were here and in Mareeba... they were all over the region in those years.
“I don’t remember it much of course, I was young, but I remember the fun of it, not the bad things.
“We had a beach house at Holloways Beach, and oh, it was wonderful when the soldiers were out. I was only three or something, but they had the big barges that would come up on the beach, and they had an outdoor theatre.
Kath, her two brothers and her sister were raised on a poultry farm in Pease St. Yes, Pease St.
“You can’t imagine a farm there now, but as the city moved out towards us, dad later turned it into Coles Caravan Park.”
They went to Edge Hill State School and walked along the once-gravel road to get there.
“When I drive around there now, I think about how we used to walk everywhere, down to the shop, it was all so different.
“Cairns was much smaller, of course, but it was changing. The wealthy Americans came in the early 60s, and tourism began to take off. Then the whole world started coming.”
At 18 Kathy went to New Zealand with her sister Mary on a working holiday. Her sister met her future husband (Trevor) who was from England.
Kathy then joined her sister and brother-in-law and two others for a two-month trip around Europe.
“I saw London and places like Venice at the very best time – in the 60s,” she said with a broad smile.
“Trevor’s father had a hobby of collecting old cars, so we took his 1923 Rolls Royce. Every time we’d pull up somewhere, we couldn’t get out of the car for the people. Oh, it made the whole trip.”
She points to a framed black and white photo of them in Venice. A classic 1960s capture of carefree youth, fashion and fun abroad.
Returning to Cairns, Kath met and married Reynold Robinson, “Reyn”, in 1968, an architect from Melbourne who was living in Cairns.
Setting up home in the “very small” village of Freshwater which was “beautiful”, Kath “just wasn’t having children”. After medical checks, she was found to have hemochromatosis.
“I had too much iron in my pituitary gland,” she said. “It was never heard of back then. Now of course it’s different.”
She pauses, considering. “It killed my mother. My Mum and dad both had to have had hemochromatosis, for me to get the big gene.”
The couple instead followed their passion for travel.
“Our first trip was to Bali in 1974,” she said. “The taxis were big American Cadillacs, and there was only about four of them... it was an amazing place.
“We’ve been over so many times. Reyn always wanted to go to Bali. He just loved it.”
Looking around their home, the intricate Ramayama carvings and artwork are a warm presence. She points to one special illustration – a joyous caricature of Reyn, “the Fox”, (her late husband’s nickname) which was done by a friend in Bali on one of their later trips.
Just last year Kath and her brother visited the island and met up with a long-time friend, a Balinese man who Reyn had met while surfing on their first trip, and who he had quietly helped with education, books, and later, his family, over the decades.
“I just received this fabulous invitation to his daughter’s wedding, it’s so beautiful, with pictures of her and the family,” Kath said.
Trips abroad were interspersed between their life in Freshwater and Yungaburra where they had a lakeside property with a “shack”.
She points to rows of clearly marked albums of their travels: ‘Yukon, Winter, 85’. ‘Germany, Fishing Trip, 2-3 weeks’.
“Reyn was fantastic at recording everything and kept albums so thorough.”
Kath opened a business in the city, Kathy’s Kitchenware, which specialised in Le Creuset cookware which she adored.
“I was reading a journal one night and there was a picture of a lady with a gift shop in Sydney, and I thought I will do that,” she said.
“I used to go to the trade fairs, and she was there. She had become an importer. I said, ‘You were my inspiration’. She was blown away.
“It was lovely to be able to tell her that.”
Her shop, on the corner of Grafton and Spence St, was in a popular block featuring a designer dress shop, a Thai boutique, and a hairdresser. It later housed the Pancake House.
“I had it for many, many, many years,” Kath said. “Then I started a cooking school upstairs. That was fun.”
One teacher had studied condon bleu cooking in London “which was very big at the time” (the 1970s-80s), another Indian lady taught Indian cooking and another taught Malay Chinese.
“My husband designed a beautiful kitchen, you know, with the mirrors above that reflect over what you are doing. We had all the chairs set up, and we ran these classes, and then they’d all come down and buy the right utensils from the shop,” she said, her face alight. Sobering she adds, “and then Cairns Central came”.
“So, the town moved down there.”
“All these people who had shops in there for years, and then they had the rug pulled out from under them.”
Kath fought the tide, and bought another shop in Westcourt Plaza and ran the two businesses, before retiring 16 years ago.
She and Reyn sold their Lake Tinaroo property and eventually settled on a large waterfront block, with a caravan, closer to the Yungaburra Village, then slowly built the home in which they retired.
The move was seamless, as they had been coming up most weekends.
“We’ve been part of the community forever, really. If we weren’t overseas we were up here.”
It’s a family affair. Kath’s brothers both have properties in Yungaburra and the close-knit siblings were an active bunch in their younger years, and still get together regularly.
“My Mum was born and bred in Cairns so we have relatives everywhere,” Kath joked.
She recalled the time she learned to ski. It was at Lake Barrine, with her sister and a few other girls, and everyone was out there.
“We thought, ‘oh dear we’ll have to have a go’. And I got up pretty quickly and that was it. Then my brothers got into it, and they bought boats.
“We used to ski over to Green Island and all sorts of things,” she said aghast. “We used to ski to the end of the dam!”
Horse riding was another favourite. She points to a banner marking the 1977 Bicentenary in Cairns.
“We were riding for five days. We went over Kuranda and down. Camped, then rode into Cairns for a big procession. It was amazing all of us riding together.”
Other mementos bring more smiles, and the medals clink as we read the dates.
There’s a gold from Budapest, another at the Sydney International in 2023, and in the Roodeplatt Dam South Africa regatta, in September of last year.
“I met an amazing rower there, he was 93.”
That event was particularly special as it was known as the “First World Rowing Event under African Skies”. She teamed up with two men from Argentina and her fellow Tablelands rower Karen Ross for the quads and they won gold.
Just as fondly she points to regattas in Brisbane, Toowong and their “first ever Tablelands regatta” in 2011.
The club has grown from the days when it was run out of founder Peter Gard’s house, then at a shed next to the old kiosk at the caravan park. Now with the Outrigger facility, they are always looking for members, she says, measuring me up.
“Renate and I are the only ones in our 80s, the rest are much younger,” she adds with a smile.
Her secret? Just keep busy, keep active. In between singing, “which I love”, with her local acapella group, Kath goes to the gym once a week, has her own rowing machine, and weights positioned “everywhere” around her lounge room.
“Halloran’s Hill is near my sister’s place; it’s a good uphill walk, I do that quite often,” she adds as an afterthought.
“You just have to keep going, you really do.”
