Today I drove the Great Ocean Road for the second time. Last time was together with my then wife, about 10 years ago, when we drove it east to west. Today I drove it in the reverse direction, which actually does matter. Let me explain:
The drive can be broken up into three different sections: The westerly section where you will get limestone feature overload, the middle section where it leads across the green hills of Cape Otway and the easterly section where the road is carved into the cliffs and the drive itself becomes the attraction. It is on this last section where you are better off if you drive east to west because you are on the ocean side, where all the lookouts are. It is almost impossible to get to them if you drive in an easterly direction. I also suggest that, if you have never driven it before, you take two days and break at Cape Otway. There are some nice walks to be had in the Cape Otway National Park and it also gives you more time to look at the many different sights on the westerly section.
Coming from the west, on the first part of the drive I felt like a postman. There are so many lookouts and sights that you rarely drive more than a kilometre or so before you get out of the car again to look at some coastal feature. The coast is limestone and, as we know by now, this weathers into spectacular shapes, so all along this section you will be presented with different formations of arches, pillars, islands and gorges. Of course they all have fancy names like the Bay of Martyrs, Twelve Apostles, Razorback, London Bridge etc, probably named by the tourist board, rather than the early explorers who were much more literal and would have called them Bay of Rocks, Rock Pillars and Holey Rock, or Blandings Bay, after some English aristocrat. The one thing that all these attractions have in common is that you will share them with lots of other people. The Great Ocean Road is a major tourist attraction and easy to reach in a day from Melbourne. You will also soon learn that the tourist dollars are resolutely delivered to us on the right hand side of walk ways... Luckily each car park exit has a large sign "In Australia we drive on the left!", so the danger of collisions on the road is less than on the footpaths.
Cape Otway is my favourite part of the Great Ocean Road. The road climbs high into green hills and pastures. The drive from the road to the cape is about 12 kilometres and leads through dense forest. On the cape itself there is a lighthouse and the old lighthouse keepers cottages, where we stayed overnight on our last trip. Today I didn't get close to the lighthouse because they fenced it all off and wanted $20 entry fee. So I took a walk up to a lookout instead, which is why you only get a far away view of the light house. What was far more pleasing for me is that I saw my first koala in the wild. Not only one, but several, it was koala city out there! About 2 km from the tip of the cape is a forest of Manna Eucalyptus, which they like to eat. I always thought that koalas mainly sleep because they are permanently stoned from the toxins in the leaves, but they were quite active, climbing around to find the juiciest foliage.
From Cape Otway the road then descends back to the beach at a town called Apollo Bay, and from there it follows the coast very closely along beaches and carved into cliffs. There are some spectacular sections. This part of the drive is as windy, or even more so, than the hill section, so you won't be able to drive very fast. As I mentioned before, here the Great Ocean Road itself is the attraction, more so than the coastal features. Albeit, along the way you will get to some small towns that look like nice places to spend a few days on a beach holiday.
Tomorrow I will head into Melbourne's suburbs to catch up with a ski bum friend who I haven't seen for many years. After that I will head through the Victorian high country towards Thredbo, where the loop around Australia will close. Let me finish today's post with a short video of a young koala taking a leap:
The drive can be broken up into three different sections: The westerly section where you will get limestone feature overload, the middle section where it leads across the green hills of Cape Otway and the easterly section where the road is carved into the cliffs and the drive itself becomes the attraction. It is on this last section where you are better off if you drive east to west because you are on the ocean side, where all the lookouts are. It is almost impossible to get to them if you drive in an easterly direction. I also suggest that, if you have never driven it before, you take two days and break at Cape Otway. There are some nice walks to be had in the Cape Otway National Park and it also gives you more time to look at the many different sights on the westerly section.
Coming from the west, on the first part of the drive I felt like a postman. There are so many lookouts and sights that you rarely drive more than a kilometre or so before you get out of the car again to look at some coastal feature. The coast is limestone and, as we know by now, this weathers into spectacular shapes, so all along this section you will be presented with different formations of arches, pillars, islands and gorges. Of course they all have fancy names like the Bay of Martyrs, Twelve Apostles, Razorback, London Bridge etc, probably named by the tourist board, rather than the early explorers who were much more literal and would have called them Bay of Rocks, Rock Pillars and Holey Rock, or Blandings Bay, after some English aristocrat. The one thing that all these attractions have in common is that you will share them with lots of other people. The Great Ocean Road is a major tourist attraction and easy to reach in a day from Melbourne. You will also soon learn that the tourist dollars are resolutely delivered to us on the right hand side of walk ways... Luckily each car park exit has a large sign "In Australia we drive on the left!", so the danger of collisions on the road is less than on the footpaths.
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| Arches |
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| Islands |
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| Pillars |
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| People |
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| My first wild koala sighting |
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| Cape Otway Lighthouse |
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| Along the descent from Cape Otway |
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| And then the road becomes the main attraction |
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