Great Ocean Road 2

The Great Ocean Road Memorial March

Honoring the men who built the road

Today our goal was Apollo Bay and Chris’s Beach Point Cabins and Restaurant recommend by the folks in Torquay. It took about five hours to travel those 60 miles giving us time to visit the lighthouse at Cape Otway. Obviously we made several stops along the way at places with names like Cathedral Rock, Cinema Point, Big Hill, and Artillery Bay.

This sign greets drivers after every view point.
Obviously they understand a lot of us are new at this.

Several miles beyond Aireys Inlet, we passed through the Great Ocean Road Memorial Arch at Eastern View. At one time this marked the official eastern end of the road although today that is officially at Torquay. Here we saw one of the many bronze plaques created to describe the history of the road. Unfortunately, some of them are worn down to the point that they are difficult to read. That is surprising since they are less than 20  years old.

One major stopping point is the town of Lorne and its Visitor Center. Australia does a much more extensive job of creating Visitor Centers than we do in the US where they tend to be few and far between and often only when one enters a state. And then they can be hard to find. The ones in our home town, Vancouver, and across the river in Portland are downtown making them difficult to find.

Views from Teddy's Point

The lady there recommended a visit to Erskine Falls and Teddy’s Point before leaving Lorne. We skipped the hour drive to Erskine Falls, but did venture up the hill to Teddy’s Point where we had some good views of the town and coastline. We stopped for a quick lunch at Wye River and then headed on a few more miles to one fo the best stops on the road, Kennett River, home to several wild koalas and lots of birds.

A short walk from the parking lot and restaurant into the forested camp area and we were getting some great views of koalas taking their day-long naps. A couple were slightly active and they had decided to pose nicely for the cameras allowing us to get some good pictures. We spent about half a hour there before heading on.

Eastern Rosella begging for scraps

Sulpher-crested Cockatoo

We passed through Apollo Bay without seeing our hotel and just figured we had missed it. From Apollo Bay the road turns inland through the Great Otway National Park. The lighthouse is a few miles off the main road through the rain forest. Again we passed up the climb even though the lighthouse park includes more displays and guides to talk about the park and the Aboriginals who lived there. Instead we walked up and down the coast a bit for some distant views. Typical weather for this time of year meant we had both a short heavy shower and sunshine during our half hour walk. This lighthouse is the first build on the Australian mainland built in 1848.

On the way back to Apollo Bay we made a quick stop at Mait’s Walk. There is a one-mile walk through the rainforest including information signs that would be good to do another timer.

Trusting Google we passed back through Apollo Bay to Skene Inlet where we started uphill with some trepidation. We had expected a hotel on the water. This would not be on the water but about five miles up the hillside to one of the most spectacular hotel and restaurant viewpoints anywhere. Our room had floor to ceiling windows and a deck overlooking the ocean below. The large restaurant shares the same view. The food was excellent. I started with some beautiful oysters from Coffin Bay further west on Australia’s south coast. For dinner I had barramundi and Linda a nice duck. The waiter told us you must have a booking to eat there during summer. We could see why.

View from our room