12 Apostles Tour

Via The Great Ocean Road route.

- Devayani Medhekar

With the treasured sightings of the waddling fairy penguins at the Phillip Island fresh in our minds we set off on another memorable guided tour on the world-famous Great Ocean Road from Melbourne to the 12 Apostles situated near the Port Campbell National Park.

We started the 12 Apostles tour around 8 am and as soon as tourists from all over the world were comfortably seated in the bus our friendly driver and guide took to the wheel and we were soon passing through Southbank and over the Westgate Bridge leaving Melbourne city, Port Phillip Bay and passing through Geelong towards the coast.

While we were just about taking in what the driver was saying about our tour and the history of the Great Ocean Road, we reached Torquay – Australia’s surfing capital with branded surf-wear and the world-famous Bells Beach about 22 kms south of Geelong. Our excitement grew when we learnt that Torquay is famous for being the official start of the Great Ocean Road.

Our chatty guide told us that the Great Ocean Road was built as a war memorial between 1919 and 1932 by war veterans in memory of those who never returned from World War 1. It is the largest war memorial that stretches 243 kms from Torquay to Allansford near Warrnambool on the south-eastern coast of Australia.

We halted at Torquay and the world-famous surfers’ Bells Beach to take photographs of the scenic splendour around us – the fascinating surf beach with pockets of dense vegetation with steep cliffs all around. The Bells Beach is famous for the Rip Curl pro-surfing competition held here every year.

Our first big stop was at Angelsea, a popular seaside town about 10 minutes from Bells Beach where we stopped for Bush-billy tea, sandwiches vegemite with crackers and Lamington cakes! We had several sightings of the Australian Eastern grey kangaroos and their joeys as they hopped on the fairways of the local golf course.