Great Ocean Road
22.04.2017 - 25.04.2017
We have always wanted to visit the Great Ocean Road, so we made the most of a 4 day weekend and booked return tickets to take our van with us from Tasmania on the Spirit of Tasmania.
Arriving early on Saturday morning we disembarked the Spirit of Tasmania and made our way west to our first stop, Bells Beach. There were plenty of surfers up early and we watched for almost an hour before we realised how hungry we were because we hadn’t had breakfast yet! We had a quick breakfast and were back on the road again, stopping constantly as we made our way along the coast, I mean how could we not when everything is so beautiful!
After camping for the night near Aireys Inlet (and seeing our first koala in the wild!), the itinerary for day 2 was to visit all the tourist landmarks, Gibson Steps, 12 Apostles, Loch Ard Gorge, London Bridge and many more. While the days were mostly overcast, they were perfect conditions for us as it meant there were slightly less people! Well and truly exhausted by the end of the day, we decided to stay the night at Port Campbell Holiday Park to recharge our cameras, shower and get a good nights sleep.
We had booked a morning helicopter flight with the 12 Apostles Helicopters for Monday morning, so of course we arrived way too early because we were so excited! Having never been in a helicopter before it was a new experience for both of us, especially because of how much you can actually see our of the huge bubble windows. We had an amazing flight over the 12 Apostles and along the coast and enjoyed every second of it. It definitely helped visiting everything the day before as you get an entirely different perspective from the air.
Feeling elated after our helicopter flight, we headed inland to the Great Otway National Park, which was considerably quieter than the coast and a very different landscape. We drove along windy, foggy, fern lined roads and stopped at Hopetoun Falls, Beauchamp Falls and the Californian Redwood Forest. It felt like being transported to another world, where everything was bigger and maybe slightly magical. We decided to stayed the night at Forrest and were kept awake most of the night by the heavy rain on the roof of the van.
Our last day was spent slowly making our way back to Melbourne to get the Spirit of Tasmania home that night. We watched the surfers at Bells Beach again and had a long lunch at Torquey before heading back to Melbourne.
We managed to fit plenty in to 4 days, but as always there are more places added to the ever expanding list of places we want to visit!
Photography Lauren and Jack Sutton
