Australia’s Great Ocean Road is “one of the world’s most spectacular drives,” said Tony Perrottet in Condé Nast Traveler. The “antipodean answer” to California’s Highway 1, this 145-mile stretch of pavement west of Melbourne embodies the “very edge of Australia.” When World War I soldiers laid the road in 1932, this “once fatal shore” was among the most isolated parts of the country. Even now, “nowhere else in the world” can you travel alone in such a “wild and undeveloped” landscape. With “craggy mountain ranges and swaths of primal rain forest” on the right and the “sparkling blue horizon” of the Southern Ocean on the left, I took to the open road.
Starting in the “surfing boomtown” of Torquay, I headed west, “crescent beaches unfurling one after the other” in front of me as the last signs of modern civilization became barely visible in my rearview mirror. “The seaside villages became more antique, the shop fronts less polished, the coast more haunted.” En route to my halfway point, Cape Otway, I quickly discovered that the Great Ocean Road is home to the “most fertile wildlife habitats in Australia.” Rainbow lorikeets perch in trees, “screeching drunkenly on fermented nectar.” Koalas hidden in eucalyptus trees “growl and croak, sounding like old boozers in a pub.” Kangaroos are so prevalent I had to dodge them as I drove.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
