Great Ocean Road

I went on a Great Ocean Road day tour during my stay in Melbourne. “Day tour” is not a mislabeling, either—I left my guesthouse at 7.10 am, and didn’t get back until after 9pm that night.

The Great Ocean Road is a two-lane (sometimes three) winding road that starts just west of Melbourne, at Torquay, and ends 12 kilometers east of Warrnambool (still in Victoria). Our tour only covered half of the road, from Torquay to The Arch, although a 3-day tour will cover the whole road as well as the remaining distance to Adelaide (or back to Melbourne, a “boomerang” tour I didn’t know anything about until after I had returned).



The highlights of the Great Ocean Road are ample surfing opportunities, the Great Otway National Park, and Port Campbell National Park—home of the famous Twelve Apostles. Large cattle buses (carrying camera-toting tourists, not cattle, but you get the idea…) storm up and down the GOR next to smaller 24-passenger mini-buses. I rode in the latter type with a tour company called Bunyip Tours, as recommended by my guesthouse travel shop, and can’t imagine going in a large bus as the small minibus for that long was challenging enough.

We started out from Melbourne, and after a quick stop in Geelong (juh-LONG), weaved our way toward Bell's Beach, a surfer’s haven. From there, we weaved our way down to Apollo Bay for a picnic lunch and a view of the start of the Great Ocean Walk—a multiday hike that leads to the Twelve Apostles. Following a post-lunch hike through a rain forest, we were on our way to the Twelve Apostles.


Bell's Beach

The Twelve Apostles are limestone formations which have been formed—and have been, or will be, destroyed—by erosion. Ocean waves hit the limestone cliffs, causing caves to form. Eventually, at the rate of 2 centimeters a year or so, the caves are ‘eaten’ away until an arch forms. Over more time, the arch collapses, forming a separately-standing limestone stack. There were originally twelve stacks, but now only 8 remain. 6 can be seen from the main viewing platform.


Great Southern Ocean. As our driver reminded us, the only thing separating us at that point from Antarctica was water.


Twelve Apostles.

In other parts of the park, recent archway collapse has occurred. In 1990, a double archway formation called London Bridge went the way of the song, as one of the arches fell down. As an interesting aside, there was a man and a woman who were stuck on the isolated stack and had to be rescued. This is an amusing tidbit in itself, but the best part has to be that both the man and the woman were married—to separate people. As the news and resulting rescue of the Trapped Duo was televised nationally, their cover was blown—and all thanks to natural science.


London Bridge

I've placed some more photos on my Flickr account.