Back in May, barely a month after ending our seven-month trip around the world, we already felt the urge to get moving again. We opted to rent a car for the weekend, and head to Torquay, the beginning of Australia’s Great Ocean Road.
The Great Ocean Road spans 243 kilometers from Torquay westwards until Allansford. The road is an Australian National Heritage, and it is no surprise why. The windy roads directly adjacent to the Pacific Ocean made for great views, and the landscape ranged from sandy beaches to rainforest.
We arrived in Torquay about two hours after leaving Melbourne. Torquay is not spectacular by itself, so we quickly continued our drive to Aireys Inlet. This tiny town is home to the Split Point Lighthouse, which offers great views of the Pacific Ocean.
Our drive continued, passing through a series of small towns, all with their own viewpoint over the ocean. We ended the day in Apollo Bay, the largest town along the Great Ocean Road. Relatively large that is, as we still struggled to find a decent dinner at 7pm on a Saturday night.
The next day we headed for the highlight of the trip: the Twelve Apostles. On our way, we passed through the Great Otway National Park, which surprisingly is a tropical rainforest. We surely did not expect such a microclimate here, but the short hike we did was more than worth it.
After another hour or so we arrived at the Twelve Apostles. After a short hike to the viewpoint, we were greeted with a series of rocks standing out from the ocean. We are actually not sure if there were actually twelve rocks standing out, or this once was the number of “apostles”. Either way, it was a sight well worth seeing.
The Twelve Apostles was the introduction to a two-hour period in which we stopped at numerous viewpoints which all had strangely-shaped rock formations standing out from the ocean. After stopping at the beautiful Bay of Islands viewpoint, we ended the Great Ocean Road trip in Warrnambool just past Allansford.
Unfortunately, the drive back along the highway inland took us another four hours, causing us to arrive back in Melbourne late, but in the end it was all worth it. Despite winter moving into Australia, the weather during our weekend away was fantastic: sunny, but not too warm or too cold. Two days turned out to be exactly the right amount of time to drive the Great Ocean Road, and we understand why this is one of Australia’s biggest tourist attractions.
