Best Stops on the
Great Ocean Road 2026

Torquay is where the Great Ocean Road officially begins — a surf town that has grown from a modest holiday village into the undisputed capital of Australian surf culture. Rip Curl and Quiksilver were both founded here, and the town's Surf World Museum is the largest surfing museum in the world. The main retail strip is lined with surf brands, board shapers, and wetsuit shops that attract browsers as enthusiastically as surfers.

Three kilometres south of town, Bells Beach is the stop that matters. Carved into the cliffs above a powerful right-hand reef break, Bells has hosted the Rip Curl Pro — the world's longest-running surf contest — every Easter since 1973. Even when the comp isn't running, the clifftop viewing area above the break is a compelling spot: watching the sets roll in from the Southern Ocean and break precisely on the reef below is a remarkably satisfying thing even for non-surfers. The cliffs themselves are photogenic red sandstone.

• 🏄 Easter weekend = Rip Curl Pro — book accommodation months ahead
• 🚶 Walk the clifftop path south from the main carpark for best views
• ☕ Excellent café precinct on Torquay's main street for early breakfast

Lorne has been Victoria's favourite seaside escape since the 1860s and it has never quite relinquished that title. The town sits where the Erskine River meets the ocean, backed by the Otway Ranges and facing a broad, sheltered bay. The beach is one of the best swimming beaches on the Great Ocean Road — patrolled in summer, with clear water and a gentle break. The pier is a Lorne institution and the stretch of cafes, restaurants, and boutique shops along Mountjoy Parade is among the best dining strips on the entire route.

A short drive or 20-minute walk up the Erskine River valley brings you to Erskine Falls — a 30-metre cascade that drops into a fern-lined gully accessible via a short, steep path. It's one of the most easily reached waterfalls in the Otways and worth the detour. Lorne is also the starting point for several longer walks into the Otway Ranges if you have more time to spare.

• 🍽️ Book a restaurant table here — it's the best lunch stop on the route
• 💧 Erskine Falls: 5min drive + 10min walk — don't miss it
• 🚗 Summer weekends: car park fills by 10am — arrive early or walk from town

This is the photograph. Located 2km west of Lorne on a sharp bend above the coastline, Teddy's Lookout provides the elevated perspective that makes the Great Ocean Road's engineering achievement suddenly legible — the road carved into the clifftop, hugging curves that would look impossible from sea level, with the full sweep of the coastline visible in both directions and the town of Lorne below. Almost every aerial photograph used in Great Ocean Road marketing was taken from roughly here.

The lookout itself is a flat clearing with a safety railing and a series of information panels. It takes 10 minutes to explore fully. Combined with the Lorne stop it adds almost no time to the journey — turn left out of Lorne onto Teddy's Lookout Road and join the Great Ocean Road again on the other side. There is no practical reason to skip it.

• 📷 Golden hour light hits the cliffs from the east — sunset is ideal here
• 🕐 The stop takes 15 minutes total — genuinely no excuse to skip it

Apollo Bay is the largest town between Torquay and Port Campbell and the natural midpoint of the day's driving. Unlike the more resort-oriented Lorne, Apollo Bay retains a genuine working-fishing-harbour character — the local fleet ties up at the harbour and the Saturday morning farmers' market draws produce directly from the surrounding Otway farms. The main street is compact and walkable, with a good range of cafes and the obligatory fish-and-chip shop overlooking the harbour.

Practically speaking, Apollo Bay is also the last reliable place to fill your fuel tank before Port Campbell, 90km further west. The towns along the route between here and the Twelve Apostles are small and their service stations are not always open. The visitor information centre in the main car park has current information on road conditions through the Otways, which occasionally close after heavy rain.

• ⛽ Fill up here — next reliable fuel is Port Campbell, 90km ahead
• 🐟 Harbour Fish 'n' Chips: order and eat on the harbour wall
• 🎵 Apollo Bay Music Festival (March) is excellent — book ahead

The Great Otway National Park is the most unexpected section of the Great Ocean Road for visitors focused on the coastal scenery — but for many it becomes the highlight. The inland detour from Apollo Bay climbs steeply into dense temperate rainforest, where myrtle beech and mountain ash replace the coastal scrub and the light changes entirely. The most accessible waterfall is Triplet Falls — three tiers of cascading water through a fern gully, reached by a 2km return walk. Beauchamp Falls is slightly longer and slightly more beautiful.

Cape Otway Lightstation — accessed via a 13km unsealed road from the Otways — is the oldest surviving lighthouse on mainland Australia, first lit in 1848 and directly responsible for preventing many of the shipwrecks that occurred along the Shipwreck Coast further west. The surrounding area is one of the most reliable locations in Victoria to spot wild koalas in the trees above the road — slow down and scan the branches of the manna gums on the road into the lightstation.

• 🐨 Slow to 40km/h on the lightstation road — koalas in almost every manna gum
• 💡 Cape Otway Lightstation entry: ~$19.50 adult — worth it
• 🌿 Triplet Falls walk: 2km return, 45min — easy, excellent
• 🌧️ The road to Beauchamp Falls may close in heavy rain — check ahead

Most visitors do Gibson Steps in the wrong order — they go to the Twelve Apostles first, then Gibson Steps as an afterthought. We recommend reversing it: start at Gibson Steps, descend the 86 steps to the beach, stand at the base of two enormous limestone stacks, and only then drive the 2km east to the clifftop viewing platforms. That sequence transforms what you see from above — you already understand the true scale of the formations and the violence of the ocean at their base.

The 86 stone steps are original — hand-cut into the cliff face by pioneer settler Hugh Gibson in the 1880s to access his grazing land below. The beach itself is spectacular: narrow, flanked by sheer vertical limestone on both sides, with the full force of the Southern Ocean arriving unimpeded. Do not swim here under any circumstances — the rip currents are powerful and the surf unpredictable. But walk the beach, look up, and let the scale sink in. It's one of those perspective-shifting experiences that a photograph cannot convey.

• 🔁 Visit Gibson Steps before the Twelve Apostles — not after
• 🚫 No swimming — serious rip currents and unpredictable surf
• 👟 Flat shoes recommended — the steps are uneven and can be slippery

Eight stacks remain standing as of 2026 — despite the name, there were never twelve. The most recent collapse was July 2005, when a 70-metre stack folded into the sea in seconds. Erosion continues at approximately 2cm per year. This is geology in real time, and part of what makes the site so compelling is the knowledge that what you're seeing is impermanent — the stacks that define this coastline today will not exist in their current form within a few centuries.

Entry and parking are completely free. The underground tunnel from the car park opens onto two clifftop viewing platforms — the eastern platform for the main postcard view, the western platform for the best sunset angle. Helicopter tours depart from the helipad adjacent to the visitor centre and provide the only aerial perspective: 12 minutes from approximately $145pp. If your schedule allows for only one additional experience at the Twelve Apostles, make it the helicopter. See our full Twelve Apostles guide for the complete breakdown.

• 🌅 Western platform faces sunset — position there 20min before dusk
• 🌄 Eastern platform faces sunrise — best for early morning visits
• 🚁 Helicopter tours: ~$145pp, 12min — transformative perspective
• 🅿️ Car park fills on summer weekends — arrive before 9am or after 4pm

Loch Ard Gorge is 3km west of the Twelve Apostles and routinely underestimated by visitors who allow 10 minutes here and then wonder why they feel they've missed something. The gorge takes its name from the iron clipper Loch Ard, which struck Mutton Bird Island just offshore on 1 June 1878 with the loss of 52 of 54 lives. The two survivors — both 18 years old, both strangers — were carried through the gorge entrance by the current and washed onto the small beach inside, which is still there, still accessible, and still one of the most beautiful and affecting places on this coastline.

Walk the full clifftop loop (approximately 45 minutes) rather than just descending to the beach. The loop passes four distinct viewpoints, interpretation panels explaining the events of 1878, and perspectives that make clear how the current that killed 52 people also, by pure chance, saved two. See our Shipwreck Coast guide for the full history.

• 🔁 Walk the full clifftop loop — not just down to the beach
• 📖 Read the interpretation panels — they add everything to what you see
• ⏱ Allow 45min here, not 10 — this stop rewards proper time

On 15 January 1990, the outer section of the rock formation then known as London Bridge collapsed without warning into the sea, leaving two tourists stranded on the now-isolated seaward arch with no way back to the mainland. They were eventually rescued by helicopter, uninjured but understandably shaken. The single remaining arch was renamed London Arch in acknowledgement of the changed reality, and it remains a distinctive and photogenic formation accessible from a short clifftop path just west of Port Campbell.

This is a quick stop — 10 to 15 minutes is sufficient. But it's conveniently located between Loch Ard Gorge and the Bay of Islands, and the story behind the name adds a layer of interest that makes it more than just another rock formation. The viewpoint is good and the platform is well-positioned above the arch.

• 🕐 Quick 10-minute stop — easily combined with The Grotto nearby
• 📷 Best angle: looking west toward the arch from the main platform

The Bay of Islands Coastal Park is the Great Ocean Road's best-kept secret, and the stop most likely to be cut when day-trippers are running late. That is a genuine shame — the Bay of Islands offers dramatic offshore rock formations, arches, and sea stacks visible from a series of clifftop walking tracks, in a setting that feels genuinely remote because almost no tour buses make it this far west. The geology here is at least as dramatic as the Twelve Apostles in some sections, and the absence of crowds transforms the experience entirely.

The main parking area is at Peterborough, from which short walking tracks fan out to several clifftop viewpoints. The area also includes the exposed metal ribs of the Falls of Halladale wreck (1908), visible at low tide near Peterborough Beach — one of the only visible wreck remains accessible to casual visitors on the entire Shipwreck Coast. If you've saved 45 minutes for this stop, you'll leave wondering why it doesn't appear on every Great Ocean Road itinerary.

• ⏱ Most people skip this — don't: it's the best-value stop on the route
• 🌊 Falls of Halladale wreck visible at low tide near Peterborough Beach
• 📍 Multiple clifftop paths — explore beyond the first viewpoint