The Travel Sage
Great Ocean Road Day Tour
After having a few days to recover from our 15 hour Grampians Tour, we did a small-group tour of the Great Ocean Road with Hit the Road Tours. After a couple hours of driving through the countryside and past dairy farms, we made multiple stops to take in the incredible coastal views. Below are images of the “12 Apostles”. Apparently, the area was renamed in the 1960’s from “Sow and Pigs” to the more appealing “Apostles”. But shortly after that, someone decided that the “12 Apostles” sounded even better – no matter that there were only 9 visible at that time. In July, 2005 one of the the Apostles (know as “Judas”) collapsed rather suddenly, and then in 2009 another smaller Apostle fell in extreme weather.
After leaving the Apostles, our tour guide let us off in a parking lot where we could access both Loch Ard Gorge (where we were able to walk down to the beach). And an overlook of a rock formation called the Razorback. In my opinion, this stop had the most incredible scenery of all the places we visited along the Great Ocean Road. Judge for yourself in these photos.
After leaving the coast, our next tour stop was a beautiful temperate rain forest called “Maits Nest”.
Many of the oldest and largest trees were called “Mountain Ash” trees. Apparently, termites love these trees and they eat them from the inside out. Here is one that is still alive.
This tree fell after having the entire inside eaten by termites. It’s hard to tell how big this tree is from the photos but the hollowed out trunk is tall enough for a person to stand in it without ducking.
After a quick photo stop at Cape Patton Lookout (the highest point on the Great Ocean Road), our tour guide drove us to a place where koalas had been seen recently. And thankfully two of them were still there. This was our first time seeing koalas in the wild. They spend most of their time sleeping, so we were lucky that one of them was awake and eating.
Our last stop of the day was at Lorne Beach. It was a pretty little beach with an enormous number of obnoxious Sulphur-crested Cockatoos.
Although I wish the guide had been a little more knowledgeable and easier to understand, overall it was a good tour. I felt that the stunning scenery at Loch Ard Gorge alone made this trip worthwhile.
3 thoughts on “Great Ocean Road Day Tour”
Pretty darned amazing, and hard to top The Twelve Apostles, but for me, Kangaroo Island is tops.
BTW, what makes the Sulphur crested Cockatoo obnoxious? Mark got so close! ‘ini your photography is stupendous!
They act like the seagulls at the beach who will steal your food. And they are very loud!