Rye is a seaside resort town, approximately 83 km south of Melbourne, on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria, Australia. Its bay beach is a Victorian tourist hotspot during the Summer months and is popular with swimmers, fishermen, yachtsmen and kitesurfers while its ocean beach (which is not patrolled) is also popular with surfers. Rye was proclaimed a town on 26 February 1861 and many of its early residents engaged in the production of lime which could be quarried throughout the area. Many golf courses and the renown Peninsula Hot Springs are now on the sites of former Limeburners’ properties and an excellent reproduction of a lime kiln can be seen on the Rye foreshore. As the demand for lime declined, Rye lead the way in a new industry, firewood. Ti tree, which had spread inland from the foreshore and fired the lime kilns for decades, was now shipped in former lime craft from the foreshore to heat bakers’ ovens in Melbourne and provided the town with another thriving industry.
