The perfect road trip: the Great Ocean Road, Australia
The Great Ocean Road is one of the most famous spots in Australia, but it definitely hasn’t been oversold. It is amazing! You’ll find lots of day trips on offer, especially if you’re in Melbourne. But if you are able to take it slow, you should! There are SO many beautiful spots along the way, you really don’t want to have to rush.
The coastline and ocean views are spectacular and there is a tonne of wildlife, especially in Cape Otway. You’ll thank yourself for hiring a car and taking your time. There’s so many lush things to see, so it’s much nicer to relax and to be able to pull over when you spot some cool stuff!
To give you an idea of how you could do it, here’s how we did it:
Day one
Start: Melbourne
Finish: Lorne
Sights:
– Kangaroo tour at Anglesea Golf Club
– Split Point Lighthouse
– Memorial Arch
Accom: Lorne Foreshore Caravan Park
Day two
Start: Lorne
Finish: Cape Otway
Sights:
– Sheoak Falls
– Kafe Koala
– Apollo Bay
– Cape Otway light station
– Glow worms at Melba Gully in the Otway forest
Accom: Bimbi Park
Day three
Start: Cape Otway
Finish: Cape Otway
Sights:
– Zip lining with Otway Fly Treetop Adventures
– Triplet Falls
Accom: Bimbi Park
Day four
Start: Cape Otway
Finish: Warrnambool
Sights:
– The 12 Apostles
– Loch Ard Gorge
– The Arch and Blowhole
– London Bridge
– The Bay of Islands
Accom: Warrnambool Beach Backpackers
Day five:
Return drive to Melbourne after visiting the Tower Hill Game Reserve.
So that’s our little roadtrip in a nutshell! But you might be asking yourself, what’s so good about Cape Otway? Are the 12 Apostles really that great? What even is a glow worm? Well, you’re in luck, as I like to talk a lot, so you can keep reading for more detail! 🙂
Day one:
We picked up our hire car in Melbourne, pointed it in the direction of the M1, and hit go! Fortunately, this M1 doesn’t take you to Leeds (sorry George), and before long you see very exciting ‘Great Ocean Road’ signs. Yay! Armed with a Coles coolbag full of grub under clear blue skies, we were living the dream.
Our first stop was a cute little town called Anglesea where we wandered down onto the beautiful golden beach and had a picnic. Then it was up to the golf club, where for $10 you can get a ride around the course on a golf buggy to spot the wild kangaroos living there! So much fun! Our driver had lots of local and wildlife info and it was great fun whizzing around and watching the kangaroos’ reaction to us. (Confusion, mainly.) We got to stop and get right up close to a mob of them too, which was lovely.
We then carried on our journey to the pretty town of Lorne, stopping off to get the classic photo underneath Memorial Arch – a wooden arch over the road that says Great Ocean Road. We also had a wander up to Split Point Lighthouse, which had incredible sweeping views of the coast. The beach next to the lighthouse was also gorgeous to have a walk along. Like many of the beaches along the GOR, it was beautiful, and basically empty!
At Lorne we were staying in a cabin on a campsite that was right on the banks of the rivermouth at the edge of the sea. We were surrounded by cockatoos, parrots, and laughing kookaburras, which was great! Although very noisy ha.
Day two
After having breakfast on the riverside, which was pretty lush, we set off on our way. It’s worth saying that the drive along the GOR itself is incredible. It has breathtaking ocean views around almost every bend, it’s hard to keep your eyes on the road ha! Just ten minutes out of Lorne you can do a little walk, about an hour return, to see Sheoak Falls. I’m a sucker for a waterfall so absolutely loved this! Unfortunately, the water was a bit murky, though, so not the kind of spot for swimming, like up in the Atherton Tablelands! Just make sure you take the path next to the big information sign. This sounds obvious, but if you’re silly Poms like us, you might take the dirt track at the back of the car park that leads absolutely nowhere… Haha!
It was then on to Apollo Bay, via a pit stop at Kafe Koala. This is no more than a little cafe next to a holiday park, but it is a great place to spot wild koalas! We saw about five of them in the gum trees to the left of the cafe, it was so lush! You can also buy bird feed from the cafe if you fancy being swarmed by parrots. I did not. But I’m a wimp! 🙂
Apollo Bay was a beautiful little spot where we had fish and chips over looking the gorgeous horseshoe shaped bay, before having a walk on the beach. We ate at the Apollo Bay Hotel, which was delicious, had a great view, and also was one of the few places that wasn’t rammed with tourists (we’re hypocrites, I know!) and also wasn’t selling flake.
It was then on to check into our cabin at Bimbi Park in Cape Otway, which was so nice for $60 per night between us! It was a 45min walk through the countryside to get to the Cape Otway Light Station from the campsite, during which we were plagued by bugs ha, but it was nice. It costs $20 to get into the lighthouse grounds, but it’s really interesting and you get to go up the lighthouse and there are incredible views from up there. Even if you’re not interested in going into the grounds, you should make the drive down to the lighthouse – the road down to it is lined with gum trees and we saw so many koalas there! And there was a huge mob of about 50 kangaroos living in a field just off this road, which we got right up close to. It’s a great spot!
After walking back to Bimbi (no bugs this time, and a few koalas!) we decided to do the hour drive to Melba Gully. This is another part of the Otway forest, which is lit up with glow worms at night! They don’t light up until it’s completely dark, and they don’t like torchlight so you have to keep turning it off, which is a bit eerie. But there were literally hundreds of them in the bushes lining the path and it was magical – almost like looking at the stars!
Day three
This day was very exciting as I’d booked us into the Otway Fly Treetop Adventures.
Nestled right in the Otway rainforest they have built a treetop walk and a zipline course. It was a bit pricey at $100 each for the zip lining, but it was SO much fun! There were six zip lines along the course, with the longest being 120 metres long and 30 metres up in the air. George isn’t overly keen on heights but just about managed to keep his cool on that one, ha!
The zip lining was two hours of adrenaline and laughter, and then we were able to do the treetop walk at no extra cost. This was dead cool with some really high look out points, and it’s set away from the zip liners so it’s really peaceful. After that we headed another 10 mins down the road to do the hour circuit walk to see the famous Triplet Falls, which were stunning.
Then it was back to Bimbi Park to have beers and a BBQ over our firepit. With possums scurrying around and kookaburras laughing their heads off in the trees, it was a pretty Aussie evening for us haha 🙂
Day four
We woke up on day four to clouds, which was a bit disappointing after three days of glorious sunshine, especially as our big stop today was going to be the 12 Apostles. But you can’t win them all I guess! Or maybe you can… seeing as by the time we arrived at the 12 Apostles there was no longer a cloud in the sky. Yay! 🙂
The view of the Apostles from the look outs (main pic) was just spectacular from every side. We sat and ate our lunch looking out at it, which was pretty special! The tide was out so we were also able to climb down Gibson Steps to walk along the beach at the foot of two of the Apostles. All of the sights along here are really well sign posted so I’d suggest having a whole day to do this stretch of GOR so you have time to keep pulling over. Loch Ard Gorge was probably my second favourite after the 12 Apostles with its beautiful beach and turquoise (and very cold) water. We did plan to go back to the Apostles for sunset but the clouds came back, unfortunately, so we had a nice chilled evening at the excellent Warrnambool Beach Backpackers instead.
The next day we had a little walk around the nearby Tower Hill Game Reserve to see some wild emus, before heading back to Melbourne. It was a great trip and we loved every minute! Cape Otway was probably my favourite spot, mostly because of the amount of Australian wildlife there 🙂
