Great Ocean Road: Great Ocean Road

The next morning was blue skies, brilliant sun, and as usual, a chilly wind. Our hosts brought down poached eggs, sausages, and other yumminess for breakfast, after which we wandered down to the empty beach and enjoyed the view.

Then it was off eastward for the official Great Ocean Road drive.

Now, the G.O.R. can be divided into four parts (my invention, not theirs). The first gets you from Warrnambool to the coast, and it’s essentially zigzagging country roads marked as the Great Ocean Road on the signs. You feel like you’ve been gipped at first.

Then you approach the coast, and out the corner of your eye, you suddenly spot a tremendous cliff formation with angry blue seas below. Out of nowhere, you’ve entered part two.

For 100 km or so, the G.O.R. skirts a continuous cliff that drops down to the Southern Ocean, in some parts as high as 1,000 feet above the water. There are scenic turnoffs almost every five minutes, which can make for very stop-and-go driving if you catch them all. Each one presents some strange new rock formation, all along the same theme of Land! Cliff! Water!

Almost at the end of this stretch is the viewing area for the Twelve Apostles, or the Postcard Image for the G.O.R. Actually only numbering seven or eight, they’re massive pillars of stone standing along the edge of the water, slowly being eaten away from underneath by the waves. It’s definitely the pinnacle of this part of the drive.

On to part three. The road peels away from the ocean, and begins a twisty-turny route through the pristine Ewok-looking forest along the peninsula. For an hour or more, you forget all about the ocean part of the road, and worry all about the 30 kph switchbacks you have to navigate. The views are of course impressive. I’d like to do it again in a Porsche (or at least a Mini).

Then in the distance the ocean reappears. Before proceeding to part four, we took the turnoff to Cape Otway, the southernmost point in mainland Australia (Tasmania of course is much further south), and the most well-known spot along the so-called Shipwreck Coast. The Cape Otway lighthouse has been in operation since 1848, when it was built by hand over 10 months. It’s not even at the highest point of land, but with the sharp drop to the water, it’s still 40 meters above sea level. We bought our overpriced admission tickets and walked the spiral staircase to the top. Outside the platform we got an encore of the bitter ocean wind that knocked us on our keisters back on Kangaroo Island. The ocean stretched for over 180 degrees around us.

That was fun. Part four! This is the original stretch of the G.O.R., which was conceived as a works program for World War I vets back in the 1920s. The road connects the dots from one coastal town to the next, hugging the curves of the coastline the whole way. This is maybe the most death-defying portion of the road; there’s more killer switchbacks, only this time instead of grass on either side you’ve got cliffs. We were just glad the weather was fine, and (unlike the oncoming traffic) we weren’t driving into the sun.

We only got a couple pictures of this portion of the trip. Shame, cause the vistas are amazing (see the banner pic at the top of the page; that’s pretty much it). But all the photo turnoffs tended to be right at the corner of the road when you had no visibility to exit and enter. So we played it safe.

Back in civilization, we had a late lunch (as before, overpriced). Around 5:30 we landed in Anglesea, where we were reserved for a Romantic Escape Package at the Surf Coast Spa and Resort.

Now, all day we’d been passing cute little B&Bs and other accommodation with killer views. So our hopes were high. Surf Coast had also been recommended by both my Lonely Planet guide book and Qantas magazine on the flight over.

We drove into the place and gasped.