What to Expect on a Great Ocean Road Day Tour

Before the day: two things to check

Your pickup details arrive by email, not at checkout. Every operator here confirms the exact pickup point and time after booking. Read that email the night before. People turn up at the wrong hotel entrance or the wrong end of the street more often than any other mistake on this route.

Check whether your tour has hotel pickup at all. Most collect from selected Melbourne CBD hotels. Two on this site do not: the Otways walking tour meets at the undercover taxi rank between Hamer Hall and the Arts Centre on St Kilda Road, and the two-day Grampians trip departs from the Immigration Museum on Flinders Street. Both are easy to reach and neither is where you would guess.

7:00–8:00 AM — pickup

Early, and non-negotiable on a standard tour: the route needs the daylight. Sunset tours are the exception, collecting between 9 and 11 AM.

Coaches run a circuit of CBD hotels, so being picked up first means a slow lap of the city before you leave. Nothing is wrong; that is the routine.

9:00 AM — Torquay and Bells Beach

The surf coast, about ninety minutes out. Several tours include a complimentary morning tea here, taken on the sand or at a picnic area. Bells Beach is a short stop for a look at the amphitheatre that hosts the Rip Curl Pro over Easter — there is rarely much to see unless there is swell, but it is the most famous surf break in the country.

This is the first toilet stop of the day, and worth taking.

10:00 AM — the Memorial Arch at Eastern View

Ten to fifteen minutes, and the photograph everybody takes. The arch marks the official start of the Great Ocean Road, and the bronze statue of two roadworkers beside it is the point: the road was built by hand between 1919 and 1932 by returned servicemen, as a memorial to those who did not come back from the First World War. It is the largest war memorial in the world, which the sign does not tell you.

11:00 AM — Kennett River

The wildlife stop, and the one that most often exceeds expectations. Wild koalas live in the eucalypts along Grey River Road, and Australian king parrots — the red-and-green ones — will land on your arm or head if you stand still.

Sightings are likely but not guaranteed. The guides check the same trees daily and know where to look, and review after review mentions them working hard at it. These are still wild animals in open forest.

Do not feed the parrots bread. The operators will tell you the same thing.

12:00 PM — Maits Rest, Great Otway National Park

A twenty-minute boardwalk loop through temperate rainforest: tree ferns, myrtle beech, and trunks with a lot of years in them. It is flat, it is sealed, and it is completely different in character from the coastline you were on half an hour earlier. Most people name it as the quiet surprise of the day.

Some itineraries substitute a different Otways walk, and the hiking tour swaps it for a longer waterfall track.

1:00 PM — Apollo Bay, and lunch

Around an hour of free time in a working fishing town. Lunch is excluded on almost every tour on this site — buy it here from the bakery, the cafes or the fish and chip shop along the main street, all within a few minutes of where the coaches park, or bring your own. Budget $20 to $30.

Queues get long when several tours arrive together, so decide what you want before you are standing in one.

3:00–4:00 PM — the Twelve Apostles

The main event, after an inland stretch over Lavers Hill. You get thirty to forty-five minutes, which covers the pedestrian underpass from the visitor centre, the boardwalk to both clifftop platforms, and your photographs.

It is exposed and the wind is relentless. There are seven stacks left of an original nine, they erode at about two centimetres a year, and you are looking at an active process rather than a monument.

If your tour includes Gibson Steps, that is a separate stop a kilometre east — a staircase cut into the cliff that puts you on the beach at the foot of the stacks. It closes in rough seas.

4:00 PM — Loch Ard Gorge

Two minutes further west, and the stop people are most surprised by. A sheltered cove between limestone walls, reached by a staircase down to the sand. It is named for the clipper that struck Muttonbird Island in a storm on 1 June 1878, days from the end of a three-month voyage; only two of those aboard survived, a nineteen-year-old apprentice and an eighteen-year-old passenger he swam back out to pull from the water.

The acoustics under the cliffs are extraordinary and the light late in the day is better here than at the Apostles.

Only reverse-route and longer itineraries continue west to London Bridge and The Grotto.

7:30–9:00 PM — back in Melbourne

Via the inland highway, which is dark and uneventful and where most of the coach sleeps. Sunset tours return later.

Plan nothing for that evening. This is the most common piece of advice from people who have done it.

What to bring

A windproof layer, in every month of the year. The coast runs several degrees colder than Melbourne and the wind at the Apostles never stops.
Comfortable shoes. Boardwalks, gravel and, on some tours, a cliff staircase.
Lunch money, or lunch.
A charged phone and a power bank. Some tours deliver commentary through an app on your own device, which will flatten your battery over thirteen hours.
Headphones, if your tour uses app commentary. They are not handed out.
Sunscreen. The UV is strong even when it is cold and overcast.

Leave large bags behind — most operators cannot carry luggage.

The honest caveats

It is a long time sitting. Twelve to fourteen hours, of which roughly eight are in the vehicle. Travellers who rate these tours five stars still mention the seats in the final stretch.

The stops are short. This is a highlights tour by construction. If you want to linger, you want a two-day trip or a private car.

The weather does what it likes. Tours run rain or shine, and the itinerary can be reordered for storms or road closures.

Extras are not always obvious. One tour on this site charges separately for wildlife-park entry — A$37 adult, A$25 child — on top of a low headline fare. Read the exclusions before you compare prices.

Ready to pick one? Our guide to which Great Ocean Road tour is right for you sets the eight side by side.