Qualla: Great Ocean Road

Great Ocean Road: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Edwin Lee, CC BY 2.0. Most war memorials are made of bronze and granite, and you stand still in front of them. This one is 240 kilometres long, and you drive through it. Between 1919 and 1932, around 3,000 soldiers who had survived the trenches of World War I came home to Victoria and were handed picks, shovels and wheelbarrows. With those, and with explosives, they cut a road into the cliffs of the south-west coast by hand. They built it for the mates who did not come home. The result clings to the edge of the Southern Ocean from Torquay to Allansford, and it remains the largest war memorial in the world.

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Image: Edwin Lee | CC BY 2.0

Great Ocean Road: Built by Hand, for the Fallen

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Goh, CC BY-SA 4.0. The idea came in the bleak years after the Armistice, when tens of thousands of Australian servicemen returned to a country unsure how to absorb them. The road would give them work, and it would honour the dead. There were almost no machines. Men swung picks at solid rock, drille...

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Image: Richard Goh | CC BY-SA 4.0

Great Ocean Road: Where the Road Meets the Sea

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mussklprozz, CC BY-SA 4.0. Past Torquay, an anchor symbol appears on the road signs, and the highway commits itself to the coast. This is surfing country. Bells Beach, just out of town, hosts an international competition every Easter, and the surf brands born here read like a roll call of the sport: Rip Cu...

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Image: Mussklprozz | CC BY-SA 4.0

Great Ocean Road: The Twelve Apostles

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ChatDaniels*, CC BY-SA 3.0. Inland through the cool fern gullies of the Otways, then the road swings back to the water for its most famous sight. The Twelve Apostles rise out of the surf in Port Campbell National Park, limestone towers up to 45 metres tall, all that remains as the soft cliffs erode and the ...

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Image: ChatDaniels* | CC BY-SA 3.0

Great Ocean Road: A Coast That Keeps Changing

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leonard Koh, CC BY-SA 4.0. West toward Warrnambool, the rock formations multiply: The Arch, The Grotto with its sinkhole rockpools, the Bay of Islands at sunset. The names carry the weight of this shore's history. The Bay of Martyrs and the nearby Shipwreck Coast recall the hundreds of vessels lost here in...

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Image: Leonard Koh | CC BY-SA 4.0