Going Great on the B100

Work travails have led to work travels over the past week, taking in Melbourne and the coast of Victoria, Sydney and Dubbo in inland NSW. For the most part it has been uneventful, from airport lounge to hotel room, via a coffee shop here and group room there. The highlight of all this however was the weekend which fell in between, in which I was ideally placed for a drive along the Great Ocean Road.

Work ended and play began in Geelong, home to the AFL champions, Ford Motor Cars and a rather industrial feel thanks to it’s positioning as a port within an hour of Melbourne. It seems the city is trying to shake off it’s dour image by sprucing up the waterfront area (a tried and tested method of urban regeneration), which is kind of pleasant and suitably quirky thanks to random pieces of architecture (you can picture the local council meeting…what does Geelong need… I know some random pieces of concrete and a few licks of paint).

From Geelong you reach the ocean at the town of Torquay, nowhere near as glamorous as the English Riviera, and then Anglesea, nowhere near as full of sheep as the Welsh one. With the day fading, the drive was sublime as the road threads it way along the coast, dropping down to the ocean on the left and bordered by koala infested ranges on the right. With nightfall I reached my destination, the town of Apollo Bay, also known as “paradise by the sea” (as opposed to the other paradise in the bush I suppose?)

A sure sign that I’m my father’s son, I woke the next morning with a 5 on the clock but instead of getting racked off with this, I ventured outside for a walk on the beach (I could hear the waves from my room) and soaked in the transition from the darkness to the light and the anticipation of a beautiful day ahead.

I was pleased to hear Apollo Bay has a lookout and naturally this was my first stop later in the day as I took my very hoonish Ford rental car for a spin.

From here I pushed further inland into the typically lush coastal ranges of the Otways, marked by the huge fern gullies, towering Mountain Ash and trickles of water filtering into reflective pools. It seems such a fertile environment is a breeding ground for all sorts of nasty creatures, though I didn’t see any apart from some screaming brats down at Erskine Falls.

This was a particularly dangerous place as the sign seemed to indicate some wild dancing going on which could lead to crowd surfing. Such hubbub apparently can trigger the trees to fall down and the snakes to infiltrate the party. Australia: is nothing safe?


The foray inland brought me out at Lorne, another cruisy coastal town and back onto the road I had taken in the fading light the night before, but one I was glad to enjoy again, stopping off at pristine beaches, looking out for koala’s bottoms poking out of the trees and veering across narrow inlets and over grand clifftops.

The B100, as this road is less commonly known, veers inland for a while after Apollo Bay, not that the drive is any less captivating, with the gums giving way to Mountain Ash and rainforest gullies. A diversion from here leads down to Cape Otway, comparatively speaking a rather unexciting scrubby headland complete with lighthouse. The road there is probably of greater interest, hosting a large population of those koalas and probably causing a few near misses as drivers look to the treetops.

Returning to Apollo Bay I took in some sand-between-the-toes therapy as the day faded, the waters definitely a wee bit chilly and the sun disappearing into a smoky mist. There was only one way that such a day could end… fish and chips and a bottle of Bundy Ginger Beer, ah.


Sunday morning emerged just gorgeous and I decided to take the old B100 as far as the Twelve Apostles… even though I had visited these before I figured it’s still a pretty spectacular place and given the weather it would be criminal not to. Along the way were a few other lookouts and beautiful beaches, before the giant sandstone lumps of the Apostles themselves.

And that was probably an appropriate high on which to leave the Great Ocean Road and head back inland towards Melbourne. There was one last stop to make and it again involved exploring more lush rainforest of the Otway ranges. Only this time the view was a bit different as I entered the Otway Fly, a surprisingly large complex of elevated walkways, bridges and towers rising above the forest floor.

Back on the road, the forest soon turned into the golden farmland, the small towns increased into suburbs and the road lanes grew as I entered Melbourne, only having to go round in circles the once to drop the car back and return to the life of what sometimes feels like a traveling salesman. After a few more flights it was nice to get back to Canberra later in the week, getting chillier by the minute but still looking great and all ready for the craziness that is the Olympic Torch Relay and ceremony and reflection of Anzac Day. Look out for me on Sky News!