We had a GREAT lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnng day, we left Melbourne at 8.30am and arrived in Warrnambool only at 8.30pm! The Great Ocean Road starts in Torquay around 2h30 drive from Melbourne. Torquay is the centre of surf culture on Victoria "surf coast", Bells Beach being very famous for surfing in Australia. Our first stop was Point Addis just after Bells Beach where you have a good point of view on the cliffs and beaches around. The road really starts to be very close to the ocean from Lorne, a very popular holiday resort, where we had lunch. We also drove to the Erskine Falls, 10min from Lorne, very nice 30m high falls in a towering blue-gum forest with also a lot of tall umbrella ferns. Before leaving Lorne we stopped at the Teddy's Lookout and really liked the view on the St George River and the Great Ocean Road. The road after Lorne is very scenic, it curves around the cliffs and offers stunning views on the ocean, but it is also very windy up to Apollo Bay. Afterwards the road goes inland through the temperate rain forest of the Otway National Park. We stopped at Castle Cove to have a look at the coast as the road momentarily returns to the ocean. After Princetown the road follows the ocean and soon we arrived at the highlight of the Great Ocean Road, the Twelve Apostles, gigantic limestone pillars, some rising 65m out of the ocean. Beautiful! We also stopped at the Loch Ard Gorge and at the London Bridge, nice as well but less impressive. We could also have stopped at the Bay of Islands, a cluster of limestone pillars, which looked very nice from the road. We were surprised how big is Warrnambool when we finally (!) arrived but still managed to find our hostel with the help of locals as we had no map! This was a very good day but a bit too long :) it will have been better to do it in two days to have more time to stop at the numerous lookouts along the road.
