Three decades ago when Singaporean industrialist Dr Robin Loh cast his eye over a 20 square kilometre parcel of scrub and grazing land west of Broadbeach he envisaged a world standard master planned community providing everything required by a modern society.

Dr Loh's vision, viewed by many at the time as being 'optimistic', was to harness the talents and ideas of the world's greatest community creators and transform the undulating scrub land into a thriving residential and business hub of which the whole of the Gold Coast and indeed Australia could be proud.

International experts were engaged and a comprehensive Master Plan developed which painted a picture of an idyllic residential living environment set around a series of lush parks and wide clean waterways and combining elements such as a thriving key regional centre, significant business base, major transportation facilities and leading educational, health, recreational, entertainment and cultural infrastructure. Robina, 30 years on has remained true to Dr Loh's initial vision. The Master Plan is well advanced and it has retained its original integrity.

Development company Robina Land Corporation was a trail blazer at a national level in bringing the totally master-planned community model to Australia. The Robina model has become a property industry benchmark and elements of it have been duplicated in other areas of Australia and overseas.

By retaining the ownership of the original land parcel over such a significant period Robina Land Corporation has been able to guide Robina's development so that it has remained consistent with the goals and objectives of the original Master Plan and also evolved to capitalise on the latest trends in urban development.

Thousands of families live, work and play in Robina and thousands more are involved in business in the thriving community. The goals and aspirations Dr Loh espoused two and a half decades ago are now reality and Robina is set to continue to evolve as a leading business and residential hub servicing south east Queensland.

Dr Robin Loh was born in Djambi, Indonesia and moved to Singapore in the early 1950's. He made several successive fortunes - in the management of Shell Oil surplus machinery site in Irian Jaya, in the salvaging of discarded US military equipment in the Pacific, and in the international oil exploration and trading business.

Dr Loh was involved in just about every kind of business, on every continent. He developed commercial and residential real estate, and developed and ran hotels of every type and size. The companies he formed were involved in everything from mining and timber processing to manufacturing and power stations. Dr Loh was also involved in the banking and insurance businesses on a large scale, and held a successful name at Lloyd's of London.

In the mid-1990's, Dr Loh managed to carve out enough time from his business commitments to complete both a Masters Degree and PhD at the University of California Berkeley. Preferring to complete a full postgraduate degree than to accept an honorary doctorate, Dr Loh attended class for several years at the San Francisco campus.

Dr Loh's philanthropic activities are not formally documented, but many newspaper reports give some indication of the scale and range of the private assistance projects he undertook all over the world.

Dr Loh passed away on August 28th 2010 after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease.  A visionary with an exceptional work ethic who was immensely proud of what he had achieved at Robina, Dr Loh is sadly missed by all those who knew him.