The Great Ocean Road is a road that follows part of Australia’s southern coastline. It stretches from Melbourne in Victoria to Adelaide in South Australia.
The Grampians National Park is situated to the west of Melbourne and is made up of numerous sandstone mountain ranges.
We drove west out of Melbourne following the West Gate Freeway and then the Princes Freeway until we reached Geelong. We then followed the road south to Torquay where the Great Ocean Road begins.
We stopped off at many of the viewpoints. We also went to the Cape Otway Lighthouse which I felt was a little over-priced for what it was.
After leaving this behind we stopped at the Twelve Apostles and London Arch which were both very impressive. We also reached the Bay of Islands in time for sunset which is a very nice spot, but fails to get as much attention as the other areas along the road as it is out of reach of the day trip coaches coming from Melbourne.
Finally we had a long drive to Portland where we’d booked in at the Victoria Lodge Motor Inn eventually reaching it at about 10pm.
The next morning we checked out and headed north to the Grampians following the Henty Highway. The man at the car rental recommended we take the road which runs parallel to the western border of the Grampians as in his opinion the views here were better. We later realised that following his advice was a mistake and it cost us a lot of time.
We did, however, manage to see some of the Grampians and from what I saw I enjoyed the Grand Canyon the most. It is a comparatively small, rocky gulley with a stream trickling through it.
For a very late lunch we stopped in Halls Gap and ate an over-priced meal from a place that I unfortunately can’t remember the name of before deciding we really must head back to Melbourne as we were over 200kms away and hadn’t booked anywhere to stay for the night! But that’s another story…
- We hired a car from Hertz in the centre of Melbourne
- The entry fee at Cape Otway Lighthouse was $13 per adult
Our own stories
More travellers’ stories
More Global Grapevine posts
