Explore Victoria
The Great Ocean Road, Victoria’s famous southwestern coastal route, starts at Torquay and extends 285km west to Warrnambool. It was built between 1919 and 1932 with the idea of constructing a scenic road of world repute, equalling California’s Pacific Coast Highway – and it certainly lives up to its reputation. The road was to be both a memorial to the soldiers who had died in World War I and an employment scheme for those who returned. Over three thousand ex-servicemen laboured with picks and shovels, carving the road along Australia’s most rugged and densely forested coastline; the task was speeded up with the help of the jobless during the Great Depression. The road hugs the coastline between Torquay and Apollo Bay and passes through the popular holiday towns of Anglesea and Lorne, set below the Otway Range. From Apollo Bay the road heads inland, through the towering forests of the Great Otway National Park, before rejoining the coast at Princetown to wind along the shore for the entire length of the Port Campbell National Park. This stretch from Moonlight Head to Port Fairy, sometimes referred to as the “Shipwreck Coast”, is the most spectacular – there are two hundred known shipwrecks here, victims of the imprecise navigation tools of the mid-nineteenth century, the rough Southern Ocean and dramatic rock formations such as the Twelve Apostles.
From Warrnambool, the small regional centre where the Great Ocean Road ends, the Princes Highway continues along the coast, through quaint seaside Port Fairy and industrial Portland, before turning inland for the final stretch to the South Australian border.
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Lorne
Lorne
Picturesquely set at the foot of the heavily forested Otway Range, on the banks of the Erskine River, LORNE has long been the premier holiday town of the Great Ocean Road. Only two hours’ drive from the city, it’s hugely popular with Melbourne weekenders who relish its surf scene and café society overlaid on an essentially middle-class 1930s resort. To complete the picture, the lush Great Otway National Park, with its walking tracks, plunging falls and fern gullies, surrounds the town.
About a thousand people live in Lorne, but from Christmas until the end of January twenty thousand more pour in; if you arrive unannounced, you’ll have no hope of finding even a camping spot.
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Port Fairy
Port Fairy
PORT FAIRY was once an early port and whaling centre but is now a quaint and hugely appealing crayfishing and tourist town with a busy jetty, a harbour full of yachts, and over fifty National Trust-listed buildings; it’s an essential destination for architecture fans. Heavy breakers roll into the surrounding beaches, and on Griffiths Island, poised between the ocean and Port Fairy Bay, there’s a muttonbird rookery with a specially constructed lookout where, between September and April, you can watch the birds roost at dusk.
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The Twelve Apostles and Loch Ard Gorge
The Twelve Apostles and Loch Ard Gorge
The most awe-inspiring formations on the coast are the Twelve Apostles – gigantic limestone pillars, some rising 65m out of the ocean, which retreat in rows as stark reminders of the power of the sea (the cliff faces erode at a rate of about 2cm a year). The (unstaffed) Twelve Apostles Centre at the car park on the northern side of the road provides clean toilet facilities and welcome shelter from the winds blowing off the Southern Ocean. It features wall-length panels of sailcloth with scripted poems about the Shipwreck Coast’s awesome, dangerous beauty. Covered walkways lead through a tunnel under the road to the lookout points and a short walk along the clifftop. Sunset here (summer around 9pm, winter 5.45pm) is a popular time for photographers and, unfortunately, crowds. Wait ten minutes or so after dusk, however, when the tourists have jumped back on their coaches and left, and you’ll be treated to another fantastic spectacle, as hordes of fairy penguins waddle onto the shore in droves.
Next stop is underrated Loch Ard Gorge, where a small network of clifftop walks and a staircase leading down to a beach give you the chance to view the fantastic rock formations all around. It was here that the Loch Ard, an iron-hulled square rig, hit a reef and foundered while transporting immigrants from England to Melbourne in the spring of 1878. Of 53 people on board, only two survived: Eva Carmichael and Tom Pearce, both in their late teens. They were swept into a long gorge and Tom dragged Eva into a cave in the western wall of the gorge before going for help. A walkway leads down to the beach, covered with delicate pink kelp, and you can scramble over craggy rocks to the cave where Eva sheltered, now a nesting site for small birds. The Loch Ard cemetery, where the ship’s passengers and crew are buried, is on the clifftop overlooking the gorge. As you drive further, you pass more scenic points, with resonant names such as Blowhole and Thundercave, before reaching Port Campbell.
For a bird’s-eye view of all this, take a helicopter ride with 12 Apostles Helicopters based on the Great Ocean Road near Loch Ard Gorge, just east of Port Campbell (t03/5598 8283, wwww.12apostleshelicopters.com.au).
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The Twelve Apostles
The Twelve Apostles
The most awe-inspiring formations on the coast are the Twelve Apostles – gigantic limestone pillars, some rising 65m out of the ocean, which retreat in rows as stark reminders of the power of the sea (the cliff faces erode at a rate of about 2cm a year). The (unstaffed) Twelve Apostles Centre at the car park on the northern side of the road provides clean toilet facilities and welcome shelter from the winds blowing off the Southern Ocean. It features wall-length panels of sailcloth with scripted poems about the Shipwreck Coast’s awesome, dangerous beauty. Covered walkways lead through a tunnel under the road to the lookout points and a short walk along the clifftop. Sunset here is a popular time for photographers and, unfortunately, crowds. Wait ten minutes or so after dusk, however, when the tourists have jumped back on their coaches and left, and you’ll be treated to another fantastic spectacle, as hordes of fairy penguins waddle onto the shore in droves.
