Above: Numerous walks dot the coastline

The Great Ocean Road starts in Torquay in the east and finishes in the west, without ceremony, near where the titular road meets the Princes Highway, not far from Cheese World, Allansford. But a lot of us conceive of the Great Ocean Road as more than a stretch of bitumen. For many, it’s a destination, including all the detours, such as to Great Otway National Park and the waterfalls around Lorne. That’s certainly how a lot of people travel it.

I suppose you can’t argue where a road ends, but you can question how an area is travelled or how it is marketed. Yeah yeah, occasionally Portland makes the cut, but only as a sideshow to the main circus. I’ve been there enough times now to feel like it’s copped the short straw. Whether you consider it part of the ‘Great Ocean Road’ or not, you should certainly consider heading there next time you’re travelling the west coast of Victoria.

The view down the road towards the small hub of Cape Bridgewater

CAPE BRIDGEWATER

Nothing more than a collection of a few houses, a restaurant and a kiosk, the town of Cape Bridgewater itself may not grab your attention, but its natural setting will. Looking back from the high carpark, you see, from the left, hills rolling with waves of lush green vegetation; a dark grey road penetrating the centreline; and a long strip of white sand — whiter than Hyams, NSW? — veering ever so slightly to the right, with sea spray enshrouding its distant reaches.

This beach is monitored by surf life saving a lot of the time, but the best awaits those willing to park in the top car park and hike up the headland along the Cape Bridgewater Seal Walk. The walk, steep at times, travels about 2km, mostly uphill. Near the trig point marking the summit, you find several spread-out viewing platforms, from which you can look down on the largest seal colony in mainland Australia. If the walk is a bit much there’s also a tour called Seals by Sea that can take you out in a boat to have a look from sea level.

On the western side of the headland you can visit the Bridgewater Blowholes and Petrified Forest. The Petrified Forest, about a 150m walk from the carpark, looks like a stand of trees that's been fossilised by sand and water. 

The Blowholes are similarly close. In big seas, the water is meant to spout out of the tessellated basalt and purple scoria rock (though I’ve yet to time my run). You can, if you want, walk further west in this direction.

This part of the coast is alien from the eastern side; you could be on another planet. Ragged limestone formations line the track: crumbling pillars, rough-hewn craters, stratified faces fanned like packets of blades. It looks as if acid rain has corroded the orange surfaces, leaving a trail of ruins along the battered coast — the desolate abodes of a sand people who never existed. Dead trees leaning leeward and green-grey shrubs growing in clumps find a fragile hold in the soil, as dark sand sifts over the landscape, as if to claim it back.

The imposing Cape Nelson Lighthouse

CAPE NELSON LIGHTHOUSE

The coast is similar near the Cape Nelson Lighthouse. It’s whiter than a picket fence plucked from the American dream, or a dentist’s tooth. First lit in 1884, the beacon was constructed to alert vessels travelling between Melbourne and Adelaide to the protruding coast. I gained a sense of its importance back in 2018, when I walked along the coast. It was a hot day, yet a miasma of muggy mist shrouded the town and the coastline, such that I couldn’t even see the horizon at midday.

The era of lighthouse keepers is now sadly over; as in so many fields, automation has rudely plucked the wheel from vainglorious man. Still, there are cottages to rent, and a cafe. I can’t mention Cape Nelson without mentioning a fascinating news story from 2015. As reported in The Standard, a man who lived in one of these cottages was awoken at 4am one morning in 2015. A male voice outside was yelling “I’m coming to get you”, a woman’s “come out, come out”, while a wood splitter whooshed through the air and crunched again and again into the door.

The door never gave but it was a tense few minutes. The culprit — yes, there was just one person responsible, not a man and a woman — was discovered to be a man on ice who’d driven 400km from Melton that very night, express post. Google the story, ‘A night of horror at the Cape Nelson Lighthouse’.

OTHER WILDLIFE

At Point Danger, which you access via Portland’s industrial area, you can see hundreds of gannets. The white sea birds, with orange heads and black-tipped wings and tails, sit like white icing on a mound of grass by the sea. Intermittently they spread their wings and soar back and forth to Lawrence Rocks, a formidable island not far away. They are fenced off, so you can’t get a close look, unless you have powerful binoculars or a long-range telephoto lens (I’d say 300–400mm). I haven’t done this myself but apparently you can arrange a closer look by contacting the Portland Visitor Information Centre.

Inland, Mount Richmond also boasts a very healthy koala population. We saw three after walking 4.5km along the two loops from the main carpark. We were lucky enough to witness one of them throw its head back and repeatedly let out throaty growls, something I’ve often heard but never actually seen. It was so demonic that I now understand why the myth of the drop bear has such currency.

Mount Richmond is an extinct volcano, not that you can really see a huge peak or crater, but the volcanic soil may account for the richness of the vegetation. Just a note on access here, the roads are unsealed and a bit rough if you come from the south, so you’re best off heading in from the north.

Category: Destinations
Written: Sun 01 Mar 2020
Printed: March, 2020
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