Reverse vs Standard Great Ocean Road Itinerary: Which Direction to Drive

The two routes

The standard itinerary follows the road as it was built: Melbourne to Torquay, then west along the coast through Anglesea, Lorne, Kennett River and Apollo Bay, inland over Lavers Hill through the Otways, and out at Port Campbell. You reach the Twelve Apostles in the early-to-mid afternoon and drive home inland.

The reverse itinerary does it backwards. Inland first, via the Princes Highway to Port Campbell, so the Twelve Apostles and Loch Ard Gorge come early or late in the day rather than in the middle. Then east along the coast, with the Otways and Kennett River and the surf towns on the way home.

Same road. Same stops, mostly. Completely different experience of both.

Why the direction decides your crowds

Every operator running the standard route leaves Melbourne between 7 and 8 AM, and the drive to Port Campbell with stops takes about the same time for all of them. So they all arrive at the Twelve Apostles in roughly the same three-hour window — call it 11 AM to 3 PM.

That is when the clifftop platforms are at their fullest. Several hundred people, a queue at the rail, and a car park doing shift work. The site is public and free, and there is no mechanism to spread the load.

A reverse tour arrives outside that window by construction. It is not a trick or a premium add-on; it falls out of the route order.

Why the direction decides your photographs

The stacks sit off a coastline that runs roughly east–west, and the viewing platforms look south and west across them.

In the middle of the day the sun is high and the light is flat: the limestone goes pale and grey and the sea loses its colour. Through the early and mid afternoon the sun moves round to the west — which means straight into your lens from the platforms. That is the hour most standard tours are standing there.

Arrive in the early morning or the late afternoon and the sun is low and behind or beside you. The limestone turns the colour it is in every photograph you have seen of the place, and the shadows give the stacks depth instead of flattening them into cutouts.

Stops only one route reaches

This is the part that is genuinely different rather than a matter of timing.

London Bridge sits west of the Twelve Apostles, past Port Campbell. A standard day tour reaches the Apostles at its furthest point and then has to start back toward Melbourne to get home at a sane hour — so London Bridge is beyond the turning point and simply does not appear on the itinerary. A reverse tour is already out there at the start of its day.

It is worth reaching. The arch was a genuine double span connected to the mainland until January 1990, when the inner span collapsed without warning and left two visitors stranded on the seaward stack until a helicopter lifted them off. Both were unhurt. What remains stands alone offshore.

The Razorback and The Grotto are in the same position — a few kilometres further west, routinely included on reverse itineraries and routinely absent from standard ones.

What the reverse route costs you

Mostly the Otways at their best. A standard tour reaches Maits Rest and Kennett River in the late morning, when the light is through the canopy and the koalas are awake and moving. A reverse tour gets there at the end of the day, when the rainforest is darker and everyone on board has already been travelling for nine hours.

You also start with a long, unremarkable inland drive rather than the coast road. The standard itinerary opens with Torquay and the Memorial Arch and builds; the reverse one opens with about three hours of highway.

Whether that matters depends on what you came for. If it is the Twelve Apostles, the reverse route wins comfortably. If it is the road itself, the standard route gives you the road when you are freshest.

Which tours run it in reverse

The Great Ocean Road DeepTour is the reverse-route option here, at $57, with ten stops including London Bridge and the Razorback. Check which vehicle tier you are booking — Classic coach, mid-size at 35, or the Mercedes van at 15 — and note that the wildlife park is a separate A$37 on the day.

Our full breakdown of that tour →

Most private tours will run the route in reverse if you ask when booking, since the schedule is yours. And a sunset tour achieves much the same result by a different method: it keeps the standard direction but leaves late enough that the Twelve Apostles land at the end of the day rather than the middle.

The short answer

If you are booking one Great Ocean Road tour and the Twelve Apostles are why you are going, take a reverse-route or sunset departure. If you are going for the drive, the rainforest and the koalas, the standard direction serves those better and you accept the crowd at the far end.