On Thursday, we started our Great Ocean Road Tour at 7:00 a.m.(returning to Melbourne 13 1/2 hours later). This long (originally single lane) 151 mile Great Ocean Road was built by hand over 13 years by the returning World War One veterans. The road was built to connect small farming and resort towns. We traveled along the coast with rocky cliffs that follow the Great Ocean Road where it has been carved out of the edges of the Otway ranges. The views were absolutely spectacular and the road was very curvy as we had previously read. The road features the contrast between ocean beaches on one side and mountains and forest on the other. We were very happy that we did not attempt to drive this ourselves. Also note, Aussies drive on the wrong (left) side of the road; so, this drive would even been more challenging for us. We also visited Bells Beach which is famous for it international surfing competition;, and it’s featured in the movie, Point Break.
We had our first koala sighting sleeping in a tree at a “bird stop” along the way. Apparently, Koalas sleep almost 23 hours a day. (An animal lazier than our Maggie dog!)
A visit to the rainforest called Maits Rest was our next stop. It was a real surprise to discover a rain forest near the GOR. We walked under canopies of Myrtle Beach, gigantic Mountain Ash and Blackwood trees ( up to 300 years old) along with huge tree ferns and mosses. It was very beautiful and lush.
The highlight of our tour was seeing the Twelve Apostles. The original name of the Twelve Apostles was the “Sow and Piglets”. This name was changed in 1922 to the Twelve Apostles to attract more tourists. These ever changing sandstone stacks along the Great Ocean Road is a photographer’s dream! Although the name says “12”, there are currently only 8 stacks since the last collapse was in 2005. The relentless work of waves and winds will inevitably lead to more collapsing stacks. This area is called Shipwreck Coast for the large number of shipwrecks that occurred in the 1800’s. We actually were able to walk down to the beach only in one area of the beach called the Gibson Steps. Almost the entire coastline has massive limestone cliffs making it impossible to enter any beach area.
The final stop was London Arch, formally know as London Bridge. In 1990 half of the bridge collapsed into the sea and left a sightseeing couple stranded on the other half surrounded by ocean! Apparently, this couple had to wait a few hours to be rescued by helicopter. (What an amazing vacation story.)
We covered the entire Great Ocean Road. While it was a very looong day, it was a great adventure.
