Great Ocean Road (Vic.)

There was a whole lot published a year back to mark the centenary. I didn't post it at the time. The photos are archived, but the text may have vanished with the yahell disintegration.

Roderick

December 27, 2019 Coast Diaries: Loving the Great Ocean Road to death
Travelling the Great Ocean Road on a motorcycle is sublime but 100 years after work on it began in the wake of war it's being overwhelmed by a wave of tourism.
Age reporter Tony Wright at the Bay of Martyrs.Credit:Justin McManus
Travelling the Great Ocean Road is a fine thing at just about any time, for it has long been recognised as one of the most spectacular coastline tours in the world.
To do the trip aboard a big old motorcycle, 100 years since construction of the road began, is even better.
Here is a journey between untamed ocean, cliffs and sharp-rising land and through the rainforested uplands of the Otway Ranges.
The 12 Apostles are a big drawcard.Credit:Justin McManus
Perched on a motorbike you are so exposed you begin to feel yourself in many ways part of the places you are passing through, with only the thrum of your motor accompanying.
And what you find, pretty quickly, is that this is a road so popular it is in the process of being loved to death.
On the first day of this journey from its start near Anglesea, heading to Lorne, I learnt to travel carefully, for the path in sections has been beaten to a rough, bucking surface by too many vehicles.
At one spot near Wye River, workers harnessed to mountain-climbing gear hung from a cliff, levering rock loosened by the elements and sending it hurtling down to prevent bigger rockfalls.
Photographer Justin McManus, travelling behind, rounded a corner a bit further along to find another major hazard: clueless motorists.
Bad driving is one of the hazards of the Great Ocean Road.Credit:Justin McManus
A small SUV, having for no obvious reason veered straight into a cliff-face, lay on its roof. Nearby, a driver and his passengers sat dazed on the roadside. They were all from China. Not unusual, locals say.
Foreign tourists, particularly from Asia, have become an increasingly high proportion of travellers on the twisting Great Ocean Road.
In Apollo Bay, savvy Chinese-speaking entrepreneurs have bought into motels and main street businesses to cater for the tide of Asian travellers.
Locals we meet all along the way tell stories of foreign travellers indulging in hair-raising behaviour: stopping in the middle of the road to take selfies and photographs of beauty spots that suddenly take their fancy; those accustomed to driving on the right drifting to the wrong lane, despite frequent warning signs advising that “in Australia, drive on the left”. Illuminated signs warning of roadworks flash in Chinese characters.
I keep the Harley-Davidson reined in, giving plenty of space to other traffic.
In the dappled Otway forest between Apollo Bay and Lavers Hill, I find myself tailing a car being driven so erratically it seems unlikely the driver has ever driven further than the shops.
Illustration: Matt GoldingCredit:
He travels at 30km/hour, jamming on his brakes for no apparent reason, even on uphill stretches, and very nearly stopping on corners. But he does not pull over to allow me or the increasingly long line of vehicles trailing him to pass.
At Lavers Hill two major routes converge: another spot to take care.
Small buses packed with tourists barrel down from Colac, meeting motorists travelling west through the Otways on the Great Ocean Road.
The vast majority of these travellers are bent on seeing the eight remaining sea stacks known as the 12 Apostles.
The site is frequently overwhelmed.
Port Campbell surf lifesavers tell of a day last summer when 15,000 people vied for space in the car park and along the road, causing an almighty traffic jam. This year, unsightly wire fences have gone up along the verges of the road to try to stop tourists parking wherever they wish.
Not all tourists stick to the official viewing areas.Credit:Justin McManus
Many of these tourists stay only for the pictures, and return to Melbourne in the same day. The wish for spectacular selfies causes some of them regularly jump safety fences and get close to the cliff edge. The mayor of Corangamite Shire, Neil Trotter, worries they do not comprehend that beneath their feet is clay that can become a slippery slide to a big drop over the edge in the wet, or powder to gravel as tricky as ball bearings in the dry.
Others venture a bit further west.
I rumble past the spookily dramatic Loch Ard Gorge, named for an 1878 shipwreck survived only by a doctor’s daughter, Eva Carmichael, and midshipman Tom Pearce. Here also is Thunder Cave, a blowhole used in 1970 by a murderer, the still missing Elmer Crawford, to dump his wife and three children.
Many travellers who get beyond the Apostles make it only to Port Campbell, about 10 minutes from the gorge, before turning inland towards Timboon and its artisan whisky and ice creamery and fine food places on the increasingly popular 12 Apostles gourmet food trail.
Mercifully, this leaves uncrowded such places as the Bay of Islands and the Bay of Martyrs – surely as spectacular as the Apostles – at little Peterborough.
I continue to Warrnambool, where I discover, on a broken and layered cliff where the Hopkins River meets the sea, a great mystery about Aboriginal habitation of south-west Victoria.
A stretch of open road is good to find.Credit:Justin McManus
The Great Ocean Road may be a century old, but Indigenous people have been living and feasting on this coast for at least 35,000 years ... and perhaps, if science can prove it, as unimaginably long as 120,000 years.
Finally, I gun the bike onwards to Portland, where my own family from all sides has lived since the 1840s.
And there, I re-visit a story of great heroism from the 1850s.
Warrnambool, Port Fairy and Portland are beyond the official Great Ocean Road, but they deserve to be included, for they are part of that stretch where once, ships regularly bashed themselves on the cliffs as they tried to “thread the needle” between the south-west Victorian coast and King Island, giving the whole seaward path of my journey the title of The Shipwreck Coast.
The road itself may be in the process of being loved to death, but the places it joins, and the sights it offers, tends to make the traveller forgive its foibles.
It was, after all, built by soldiers returned from the foreign hell of World War I.
video 'Drowned Apostles' discovered under 50m of water
The total number of Apostles will be brought up to 13 after a further five limestone stacks were discovered beneath the water.
It took more than 3000 of them, often working in dangerous conditions, more than a decade to create a rough and often muddy track, some of it paid for by tolls levied on travellers.
A century after construction began, it is worth, as you travel its twists and turns, remembering that the Great Ocean Road was built by those returned soldiers in memory of their mates killed on the battlefields.
It remains the biggest, and certainly longest, war memorial in the world.
Next up, the not-so-old man of the surf in Fairhaven
Related Article If we don't act it will soon be the not-so-Great Ocean Road
< www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/the-...20191226-p53n0g.html >
* some of the best of the Great Ocean Road is past Port Campbell right down to the Cape Nelson State Park but its hard to do as a day trip so most tourists and tour buses don't bother to go luckily for the rest of us!
* As someone who has lived in a town on the GOR for over 30 years, Loved to Death is an understatement. Theme Park Ocean Rd would be closer to the mark, a 5 - 10 $ a day tourist levy is desperately needed for the upkeep of tourist facilities not just using ratepayer funds. Keep in mind not all residents of GOR tourist towns get a $ benefit from being subjected to mass tourism.
* I have seen exactly what you are describing above...the Great Ocean Road is a scary road to be on. So many tourists have very basic driving skills and that is being generous. They will park in bends to stop for a photo, they crawl at 20km/h so they can stop on the middle of the road for that instagram photo, they have no spacial awareness and can be downright rude.
As for riding a Harley along the Great Ocean Road...don't get me started. I'm a pillion only but by god they drive way too close behind us...
The Great Ocean Road has changed so much over the years and I don't think it's for the better.
* We travelled the Great Ocean Road starting in Allansford, which only 30% of travellers do, I'm told. It is worthwhile doing the trip with real beauty places like Sheok Falls. We were good visitors though, reading the signs and act accordingly. The views are spectacular, no need to put yourself in danger. We took 3 days to cover the distance, time to enjoy it all.

191227F-Melbourne'Age'-GreatOceanRoad-a-ss.jpg

* <Steppenwolf - Born To Be Wild (Easy Rider) (1969)>
* <Born to be Mild>

I went to school at Lavers Hill

Grew up at Beech Forest

Joint is stuffed now, my brother still farms on the ridge
To many hippie do gooder tree hugger types and they wrecked the community as it was


I guess thats almost a rant lol

Paul

The Great Ocean before speed limits on a motor bike could want any better passing over double lines, bike tyres on right side of road rest hanging over white line Riding over the London bridge and doing circle work on the top
Not me any of the above just heard about these things being done

A slight aside while I hunt for other GOR items.
This is Beech Forest as Paul would remember it.
While Puffing Billy's Upper Ferntree Gully - Belgrave track was being rebuilt as a suburban line, and PBR was restoring Belgrave - Menzies Creek, the carriages were sent to the surviving narrow-gauge line: Colac - Beech Forest - Weeaproinah. That line had been built to Beech Forest for timber, and was later extended along the ridge towards Lavers Hill, but never got past Crowes (too rugged), mainly for potatoes. There was a change of direction at Beech Forest, and a balloon loop was built around a tennis court to make that easy. Over 1959-62 a memorable series of excursions ran: for locals and for railway enthusiasts from Melbourne. This one was taken from the road bridge, before the pub burned down. My father took a similar 1962 view, but without the pub.
Doug McLean was a Victorian Railways train controller who was active in Australian Railway Historical Society. This photo shows the return to Colac of a train which had run only to Beech Forest, on Sat.1.3.1959. The loco is G41, one of two Garratts owned by VR. The type was common on many Australian systems and colonial railways. By articulating the boiler unit between two engine units, the boiler could be large, the loco could be large, yet light on rail and bridges because of the many axles, well spread; the big loco could handle sharp curves. I got the whole way to Weeaproinah 2 weeks later, and again in March 1962. Today, G42 is active on Puffing Billy, and restoration has just been completed on a smaller Garratt, imported from South Africa.
19590301Sa - Beech Forest, G41. (Doug McLean, Roderick Smith collection)
Roderick

I've got over 40 items filed: a mix of tourist photos and worries about deterioration.
I plan to post just the centenary set.
190818Sa-Melbourne'HeraldSun'-GreatOceanRoad

Roderick

Roderick Smith wrote: A slight aside while I hunt for other GOR items.
This is Beech Forest as Paul would remember it.
While Puffing Billy's Upper Ferntree Gully - Belgrave track was being rebuilt as a suburban line, and PBR was restoring Belgrave - Menzies Creek, the carriages were sent to the surviving narrow-gauge line: Colac - Beech Forest - Weeaproinah. That line had been built to Beech Forest for timber, and was later extended along the ridge towards Lavers Hill, but never got past Crowes (too rugged), mainly for potatoes. There was a change of direction at Beech Forest, and a balloon loop was built around a tennis court to make that easy. Over 1959-62 a memorable series of excursions ran: for locals and for railway enthusiasts from Melbourne. This one was taken from the road bridge, before the pub burned down. My father took a similar 1962 view, but without the pub.
Doug McLean was a Victorian Railways train controller who was active in Australian Railway Historical Society. This photo shows the return to Colac of a train which had run only to Beech Forest, on Sat.1.3.1959. The loco is G41, one of two Garratts owned by VR. The type was common on many Australian systems and colonial railways. By articulating the boiler unit between two engine units, the boiler could be large, the loco could be large, yet light on rail and bridges because of the many axles, well spread; the big loco could handle sharp curves. I got the whole way to Weeaproinah 2 weeks later, and again in March 1962. Today, G42 is active on Puffing Billy, and restoration has just been completed on a smaller Garratt, imported from South Africa.
19590301Sa - Beech Forest, G41. (Doug McLean, Roderick Smith collection)
Roderick

Thanks Rod

Spuds and pulp timber were the main freight

My father has told me many times how G class had the tractive effort of broad gauge J and K class

My father and uncle are both quite passionate train people
My Uncle still believes one day they will rebuild the line when people see the true value of rail
I think he may be long gone before that ever happens

The dance floor at Beech Forest was a tree stump
Yes trees were truly massive up there yet not very old as the storms from Antarctica bowls them over
Was still one Valley of giant trees left in the Otways

But as I have already said, the area is buggered now, to many none productive tree huggers and hippies

Paul

I used to know were a lot of logging winches were and old saw mills
There was timbet tramways all over the place heading east from Beech Forest
I doubt if any of its left and its been 30 plus maybe even 40 years since I have been exploring up there
Saddens to think of what was and what it has fturned into

Paul

The Coopernook State forrest was logged for cedar both red and white, tallowood, turpentine and brushbox to name a few. All this started way back with a base at Langley Vale where they ran trains on timber rails up into the mountains where steam powered winches did a lot of work pulling it all up from the gullies to the rail line.Over time fires wiped out the lines and bridges and they were rebuilt quickly. Some timber was used in the boat building industry based around the Manning & Lansdowne Rivers and the rest went over the bar at Harrington on steam boats. The cuttings where the rails used to run can still be found when you know where to look. I found a small pamphlet at the Cundletown Museum on the history of Langley Vale and the timber cutters and it is a superb story. There are many more pamphlets back at the Museum I must go back and buy some more.

'Light Railways' magazine is a serious historical-research publication of narrow-gauge and industrial railways around Australia. A key feature is linking the railway to the industry and the social setting of the era. Victorian timber tramways feature strongly, and now north-coast NSW ones. There are lots of other industries: salt, mining, construction projects, sugar. In Victoria, the 1939 fires killed most. They had followed major 1926 fires. Forest Commission deemed that all future milling should be in safe areas, not in the bush, and that road transport was sufficiently developed that logs would come to the mills by truck. That in turn led to the network of forest roads which were useful as firebreaks, and for firefighting access.

Roderick

200106M-Melbourne'Age'-GreatOceanRoad

My father still subscribes to the light railway magazine and has fod as long as I can remember
There was some other Australian rail magazine he subscribed to up until at a guess the mid 80's
As young kids he took us on train trips on every line in the state as they were slowly shutting
Hard to believe that Im working out of Mildura these days I cant catch a train from here yete freight trains leave dajly

Sorry way off topic now

I could talk for hours about this stuff but wrong forum lol


Paul