Pupletts in Sweden: Great Ocean Road (19-27 Apr) - Part 4: Lorne, Warrnambool & Great Ocean Road

After seeing Nadia, we headed to Torquay and then started on the Great Ocean Road. I gave some details of the history of the road in the first blog post: Here, so I won't repeat them.

The drive to Lorne was fairly uneventful - a timelapse of the drive is below:

I had some great memories of the Lorne caravan park, so I was really looking forward to staying there. When we had come in 2007 we had cooked a BBQ surrounded by Lorikeets and Rosellas,. Unfortunately it turned out that there were multiple parks in Lorne as part of the same complex, and previously we had started at the one up on the cliff. This time we stayed at the Great Ocean Road park. It was comfortable, quiet and the staff were friendly, but the plot sizes were small, there were no birds and the dryers in the laundry left a bit to be desired. Our first issue was how to get into our site:

Our plot circled in red

Our plot was right behind the amenities building, but as can be seen by the car trying to back in, there wasn't a lot of space. Our car was a Kia Grand Carnival, 5m long, the Taj was another 3-4m or so and then give about 0.5m for the trailer hitch. That didn't give a lot of room to be able to back into the site. Coupled with the constant traffic of people coming each way to come and go from their sites, we had a rough time backing it in. Eventually we got it on the block, but weren't close enough to the edge of the block to have sufficient room to fold it all out. So I tried to move it. The Taj weighs about a ton or so, so it wasn't easy. I managed to back it up, but when we tried to change direction, the jockey wheel collapsed (again). I wasn't able to lift it high enough to reconnect it, but luckily so nearby campers gave me a hand lifting it back onto the wheel and dragging it into location.

Other than that, the campsite was fine and there were no other prob... oh, wait, the dryer... We decided to take the chance to get some of our clothes washed and dried. Washing was fine, but after two full cycles in the dryer (at $3 a cycle) the clothes were still soaking wet. We hung them up around the camper and Kris had to resort to drastic measures to get some of them dry:

Drying the clothes

The next day we were off early and heading down the main part of the Great Ocean Road. Our first stop was to be the Twelve Apostles, but we managed to snap a few decent pictures along the way (timelapses of the drive are at the end of this post).

Torquay to Lorne:

Beaches just outside Torquay

Start of the Great Ocean Road (west)

Info Sign

Details on the memorial arch

The memorial arch plaque reads:
Three thousand Australian returned soldiers and sailors of the First World War (1914-1918) build the Great Ocean Road. They had survived a terrible world war in which 330,000 Australians volunteered to fight in Europe, Turkey and the Middle East, 60,000 were killed and 160,000 wounded. The casualty rate of more than 64% was higher than that of any other nation engaged and Australia's highest in any war. This loss had immense repercussions for the returned men and broader Australian community of 5 million people for ensuing decades.

Funding employment for the returned servicemen was a crucial factor in their rehabilitation to civilian life. Many had their original pre-war jobs preserved and some took up soldier-settler farms subsidised by the government.

In Victoria post War, the GOR project offered the chance to work again in the open, share mateship and contribute to a vigorous, young Australia then, just 20 years old. The majority of the workforce were returned men, they were all employed with good pay and conditions. Funding was irregular, the State Government was restrictive, but the Returned & Services League (RSL) and local communities were generous.

The current Memorial Arch is the fourth to be erected. Fire, storm and road widening removed the previous three, and earlier arch stood over the old tollgate at Grassy Creek.

The Arch commemorates the construction of the road and symbolises the sacrifice made by so many in the First World War. It stands astride the largest enduring war memorial in the world, "The Great Ocean Road", a living memorial to our forefathers.

So, it was truly the right time to drive the Great Ocean Road on ANZAC day..

Commemorative Statue

Lorne to the Twelve Apostles:

Separation Creek

The Twelve Apostles:
The Twelve Apostles are located in the Port Campbell National Park on the Great Ocean Road and a series of limestone stacks off the coast. The main group of stacks in called the Twelve Apostles (even though only seven are visible - the eighth collapsed in July 2005). There are other stacks further down the road that make up the remainder.

The stacks were made by seawater erosion of the soft limestone, creating caves that became arches and then collapsed to make stacks.

Twelve Apostles

It was a little cold and windy

The main lookout was pretty busy

You can see the erosion on the bottom right corner of the stack

A wedding on the beach by the Apostles

Twelve Apostles to London Bridge:
Next stop after the Twelve Apostles was the stack named London Bridge. There were some great coastal sights along the way:

Port Campbell

London Bridge:
London Bridge (now named London Arch) was formally an arch that collapsed in 1990. Originally tourists could walk along the arch from the shoreline. When the arch collapsed, two tourists were stranded on the end and needed to be rescued by helicopter - no one was hurt in the collapse.

London Bridge

It is interesting to see that even in the 12 years since we last visited, further erosion has taken place:

London Bridge (2007)

The far arch (2019)

Bay of Martyrs
Next and final stop for the Great Ocean Road was the Bay of Martyrs (Bay of Islands Coastal Park:

After finishing up at Great Ocean Road, we headed to our next stop, the Shoreside Caravan park at Warrnambool. The park was massive and we had a nice sized plot to set up in. Just outside the park was the Patrobe playground where the kids had a good play to unwind: