Journeys
The Great Ocean Road, and the limestone the sea is taking back
West of Melbourne, a road built by returning soldiers runs along a coast of surf beaches, rainforest and crumbling limestone cliffs. Its famous rock stacks are being worn away by the Southern Ocean as you watch, slowly, and sometimes suddenly.
By Walter Pellow20 October 20264 min read
After the First World War, thousands of Australian soldiers returned home from Europe and the Middle East to a country with few jobs to offer them. In the state of Victoria, one answer was a road. Between 1919 and 1932, returned servicemen, working largely by hand with picks, shovels and explosives, cut a road along the rugged coast west of Melbourne, from Torquay towards Warrnambool. It was built as a memorial to those who had died in the war, and it is often described as the largest war memorial in the world. It also opened up a stretch of coast that had been reachable only by sea or rough bush track.
Today the Great Ocean Road, some two hundred and forty kilometres long, is one of the most famous drives in Australia, and it deserves its reputation.
Surf, forest and koalas
The eastern part of the road runs past some of the best surf beaches in Australia. Bells Beach, near Torquay, hosts one of the longest-running professional surfing competitions in the world. From there the road twists along the foot of the hills, often cut into the cliff face with the sea directly below, through small resort towns such as Lorne and Apollo Bay.
Inland rise the Otway Ranges, covered in tall eucalyptus forest and cool temperate rainforest, with giant tree ferns, waterfalls and walking trails. Wild koalas are common in the trees along parts of the road, and it is not unusual to see them dozing in the forks of the branches above.
Its famous rock stacks are being worn away by the Southern Ocean as you watch, slowly, and sometimes suddenly.
The Twelve Apostles and the Shipwreck Coast
West of the Otways, the landscape changes. The road comes out onto a coast of soft limestone cliffs, battered by the swells of the Southern Ocean, which roll in uninterrupted from the Antarctic. The sea has cut the cliffs into arches, gorges and stacks, and the most famous of these are the Twelve Apostles, a group of tall limestone pillars standing in the surf off Port Campbell National Park.
The name is a piece of marketing. The stacks were once known as the Sow and Piglets and were renamed in the twentieth century to sound grander, and there have never been twelve of them visible from the main viewpoint. Their number is falling. The waves undercut the base of each stack until it collapses, and one of the Apostles fell in 2005. A few kilometres away, a natural arch known as London Bridge collapsed in 1990, leaving two startled visitors stranded on the newly separated outer section until they were rescued by helicopter. At the same time, the sea is cutting new stacks from the cliffs, so the coast is always being remade.
Loch Ard Gorge, nearby, is named after a ship wrecked on the coast in 1878. Of the fifty-odd people on board, only two survived, washed into the gorge. They were a young crewman and a young woman passenger, who later returned to Ireland. It is one of hundreds of wrecks along this stretch, which is known as the Shipwreck Coast.
Port Campbell, the small town nearest the Apostles, makes a good base for seeing them at dawn or dusk, when the coach parties from Melbourne have gone. A day trip from Melbourne to the Apostles and back is possible but long, and it means seeing the most dramatic part of the coast at midday, in the flattest light, after hours in the car. The road deserves at least one night on the way.
Warrnambool, and the whales
At the western end of the road, Warrnambool is a coastal city with a maritime village museum. Between about June and September, southern right whales come close to shore at nearby Logans Beach to give birth and raise their calves, often visible from a viewing platform on the dunes.
Travelsphere's The Wonders of Australia, twenty-nine nights, includes Warrnambool and Melbourne on a route that also covers Perth, Adelaide, Kangaroo Island, Sydney, Uluru, Alice Springs, Darwin, Kakadu, Katherine and Cairns.
Travelsphere's The Wonders of Australia with New Zealand and Cook Islands Add-on, fifty-two nights, covers the same ground, including Warrnambool. It adds Kings Park and Cottesloe Beach in Perth and Flinders Chase National Park on Kangaroo Island, and then New Zealand and the Cook Islands.
The Apostles are at their best at sunset, when the low light turns the limestone gold, though the viewpoints are crowded then. Early morning is quieter, and the stacks are just as fine.
By Walter Pellow, the name Atlas & Passage’s editorial team writes under. Prices and dates in the trips below come from the operators and can change.
