The Great Ocean Road, famous in Australia and one of the most beautiful road trips in the world. A road trip we defenitely wanted to do during our year adventure in Australia. Whilst the tour buses crazily do this in one day, we decided to take a bit more time and do it in two days. The Great Ocean Road starts about an hour drive from Melbourne, in Torquay. The 250 km long drive from Torquay to Warrnambool is absolutely stunning, passing long stretches of beaches, high cliffs, national parks and small coastal towns.
Torquay is the start of the Great Ocean Road and famous as a surfers hub. This is the place to be for buying your surf / water sport equipment. We only stopped here to pick up a pair wet suit booties for diving and a quick look around the iconic surf brands shops such as Ripcurl and Quicksilver.
Only a short ride from Torquay, you will find the famous Bells Beach, an important place in the surfers world where waves can reach a hight of 5 meters. It is worth to stop here to check out the beach and walk along the stunning coastline.
You will pass many beaches which are suitable for swimming and relaxing on the way from Torquay to Lorne. We stopped a few times along the road to enjoy the views. The Great Ocean Road has many ‘view point stops’ along it, which is great!
After half a day driving around, we decided to go for lunch in Lorne, a small coastal town. Lorne has a few places where you can eat and a few shops. We found a delicious burger place called; The Bottle of Milk, where you can have a big proper burger for roughly $14. They have 24 different burgers, all with fresh ingredients. The Blue Cheese Burger is defenitely a recommendation!
The part from Lorne to Apollo Bay (45) was defenitely our favorite part of the Great Ocean Road! The views are the best along these 45 km, I think we stopped in total 10 times to take pictures of the incredibly view and the koalas sleeping in the threes.
After Apollo Bay we drove to the national park. We decided that it was time to keep our eyes open for a place to camp, as it was already 6 pm (I absolutely love the long days in the summer around Melbourne!). We only brought a small tent with us and some blankets as it would only be for 1 night. After a few km driving around the Cape Otway National Park, the most southern point of the Great Ocean Road, we found a sign directing us to a campsite on Blanket Bay, in the National Park. The campsite had an absolute stunning location, in the middle of the National Park and near the sea. Besides that, the camping is full of wild koala bears! You will defenitely see and hear them when you are there.
The next morning, we woke up early to see the sunrise from the beach. Unfortunately, the cloudy rolled in before sunrise, but still it was pretty cool. After packing our tent we headed off to Port Campbell, where the famous ‘Twelve Apostles’ are. Whilst we were driving early morning in the National Park, back to the Great Ocean Road, we came across a few black Wallabees. Which was pretty cool!
When we arrived at the ‘Twelve Apostles’ it was unfortunately still very foggy and we couldn’t even see them. We decided to drive all the way to the end of the Great Ocean Road, to Warrnambool (66 km) and wait till the weather got better.
Warnnambool is only worth a stop when you are traveling between May – September, as you can see the Southern Right Whales from the beach. We only stopped at the Warnnambool cheese factory and shop for cheese night supplies and from there headed back to Port Campbell, the closest town to ‘ The Twelve Apostles’.
There are many stops and view points on the way from Port Campell to ‘ The Twelve Apostles’. We stopped at The Grotto and London Bridge. The Grotto is a sinkhole. You can take the steps down the cliff face to the bottom and look through it. You’ll get to see the ocean beyond a rock pool.
After all the sightseeing we got hungry and decided to go for lunch. We had a delicious lunch ($16) at Karoa In Port Campbell which is high recommended. After lunch, the weather was finally a bit better so we headed back.
After lunch it was time to drive to the Twelve Apostles. The Twelve Apostles are the most iconic sight of the Great Ocean Road. You haven’t been on the Great Ocean Road if you don’t have a picture with these famous sea stacks. It is busy, very busy with buses full of tourists who are quickly snapping a shot before they have to go to the next stop (sorry, not our style of traveling).
There are only seven remaining (the rest have fallen) and forming the backdrop are these magnificent cliffs up to 70 metres high. Really impressive! You can walk around following the boardwalks with different viewpoints. It is worth spending a bit of time here to see the sea stacks from different angles.
After viewing the impressive Twelve Apostles, it was time to head back to Melbourne. We decided not to take the short cut back, but just to follow the Great Ocean Road. Simply, because the drive is so beautiful. It took us 4 hours to drive back, including toiletstops.