Nathan and I had played around with how we were going to get around Australia. Do we rent a car, see if buses would take us places, or fly from place to place? After finalizing the top places we wanted to see and garnering referrals, we decided seeing Australia by car would be the best.
When you’re typing things to do in Southern Australia, the Great Ocean Road pops up on almost every blog post. Fine, let’s add it to the itenerary. That will be a couple of days, what next? Knowing we were going to have a car already, why not just tack on a couple more days and road trip back East to Sydney? Sweet, let’s get a list of places to stop at along the way to Sydney.
Thus begins our driving portion of Australia where we go out West for a couple of days on the Great Ocean Road and turn back around to go east (that second part of the leg is covered more in the next post here).
Day 1: Starting The Great Ocean Road
The Great Ocean Road starts in Torquay and ends in Allansford. We had about two days budgeted towards this part of the road trip so we woke up bright and early to get our car rental (hello, more driving on the left side of the road).
Along the way we stopped in a little town called Anglesa to get some coffees. It was here we realized how the coffee quality stays pretty consistent. AKA it’s good still even outside the big towns. Grow is a cute place to stop in and gab some lattes. Highly recommend!
Great Otway National Park
Fueled up on caffeine, we stopped in Great Otway National Park for a hike. Of course within a minute of starting our hike I see a snake just chilling off the side of the trial. Cue me being paranoid the rest of the hike. Being from Colorado, we take great hikes for granted. Meaning when you say there is going to be a waterfall, we are expecting the wow factor. While this hike did not have the WOW moment with its waterfall, it did offer some giant trees.
Cape Otway Lighthouse
After the hike we got fish and chips in Lorne, walked the beach in Apollo Bay, and drove to the Cape Otway Lighthouse. Honestly it was a little disappointing because Nathan didn’t see koalas in the wild (you’ll notice this theme pop up again) and it was going to be AUD$10 just to walk up to the lighthouse and you couldn’t even go inside it (thanks a lot mercury spill). Instead we took a side hike, capturing a photo of the lighthouse from far away.
Up next, the Twelve Apostles. This is a classic Great Ocean Road so of course when we arrived for sunset, it was crowded. It was cool though to see the natural rock formations that nature creates. I did not take any photos from sheer overwhelm, but if you google Twelve Apostles, Australia, you’ll get the idea of what it looks like.
The long day of driving ended in Port Campbell at the fancy Loch Ard motel where we heard the neighborhood outdoor rock concert go on until 11pm.
Day 2: Out and Back
We covered a decent amount of ground in the first day so the second day was seeing a couple more cool rock formations near the beach and heading back east.
After getting coffee from Grassroots Deli Cafe, we drove about 17 minutes to see our final bigger sights for the Great Ocean Road. There are so many rock formations that pop up along the beaches which in my opinion are just as cool as the Twelve Apostles (and a lot less crowded when we went to these). We saw the London Bridge, Bay of Martyrs, and the Peterborough beach overlook to round out our coastal drive.
London Bridge & Bay of Martyrs
Now time to go east! Heading back towards Melbourne, we stopped in a little town called Camperdown. It was very idyllic with its main street and clock tower. When waiting for an eggs benny toastie and our second coffee of the day, a lady asked us where we were from. She guessed based on our accents that we were from Ireland. I felt honored that our midwestern USA accents seemed more Irish to her ears. After chatting with her for a little, we got our food and finished the rest of the drive ending in Inverloch.
Inverloch is another little town that is two hours south east of Melbourne. Here is where we unpacked our backpacks for the night at our little guest suite Airbnb and ate seafood linguine at the Inverloch Esplanade Hotel. I keep forgetting that we have been next to the ocean this whole time rather than land locked Colorado so it was a nice reminder that the seafood is a lot fresher here.
