Great Ocean Road Itinerary: Driving Melbourne to the Twelve Apostles in 3 Days

Everything below is what you actually need in the first hour, in the order it will matter. None of it is difficult in isolation. What catches visiting drivers is the combination — an unfamiliar side of the road, a right-hand driver position, metric signage and a cliff-edge two-lane road, all at once, on the same afternoon you got off a long-haul flight. Which is the real argument for not starting the coastal section on day one.

Melbourne (MEL) is the gateway, and the airport sits on the north-west side of the city, so you can route toward Geelong and the surf coast without crossing the centre of town — a genuine advantage on your first day of left-side driving.

Drive west — Melbourne toward Port Campbell — and not east. The reason is purely mechanical, and it is the most useful piece of routing advice on this page: because you are driving on the left, heading west puts the ocean on your left, which is the passenger side. Every lookout, every pullout and every photo stop then becomes a simple left turn into the parking bay and a simple left turn back out, with no crossing of oncoming traffic on a blind coastal bend. Drive it eastbound and you spend three days making right turns across traffic you cannot see around.

Distances below are approximate driving distances for planning. Do not convert them into drive times using highway arithmetic — the coastal section averages far less than its posted limits because of the corners, the traffic and the fact that you will stop constantly.

The one structural variation worth considering: split the last night, staying in Apollo Bay on night two and Port Campbell on night three, then drive the inland A1 home on a fourth morning. That buys you sunrise at the Apostles, which is the one thing a three-night version cannot give you. Apollo Bay is the base that makes the middle of the trip work, and its accommodation stock is small enough that it fills early in summer.

Start with the fact that reframes the whole stop: there were never twelve. The formation was described as nine stacks at the turn of this century. One roughly 50-metre (160 ft) stack collapsed in 2005, and another is reported to have gone in 2009, which leaves seven standing — the number you will typically be told at the viewing platform today. They are limestone, they sit in the full force of the Southern Ocean, and they are eroding continuously. Published erosion rates vary enough that it is more honest to say it qualitatively: this coastline is actively retreating, stacks are formed and lost on human timescales, and the count has changed twice in living memory.

The light, which is the whole reason to come late

The stacks sit off a south-facing coast and are viewed looking roughly south-west from the main platform. In practice that means the late afternoon and sunset sun comes from behind and across them, raking the limestone and separating each stack from the one behind it. At midday the sun is overhead and slightly behind you, the stone goes flat and grey, and the sea loses its colour — which is exactly the photograph most visitors take, because that is when the day-trip coaches arrive. Sunrise is the other good window, and it works better from Gibson Steps, where you are at beach level looking up at the cliffs with the light coming in low from the east.

One more sequencing note, because it is counterintuitive: do Loch Ard Gorge, London Arch and the Grotto before the Apostles, not after. They are all within about fifteen minutes of each other, they photograph perfectly well in ordinary afternoon light, and getting them done means you are not checking your watch while standing at the main platform during the one half-hour that matters.

This is the part most itineraries hand-wave, and it is the thing visitors most want and most often miss. Wild koalas are small, grey, motionless and twenty metres up a grey-green gum tree. You do not spot them by driving past hopefully; you spot them by being in the right road at the right hour, walking slowly, and looking for a shape in the fork of a branch rather than for an animal.

Where you sleep determines whether you see the Apostles in good light or not, so this is a routing decision disguised as a hotel decision. Drive times below are approximate one-way times to the Twelve Apostles and assume daylight and ordinary traffic.

The counterintuitive call: one night in Port Campbell

Most itineraries base the whole trip in Lorne or Apollo Bay because they are the pleasant towns with the restaurants, and then drive out to the Apostles and back in a single afternoon. That is a round trip of roughly three hours from Apollo Bay and closer to four from Lorne, which is precisely what forces people into a midday visit. Port Campbell is small and its dining options are limited, and that is the trade: fifteen minutes from the cliffs means you can shoot sunset, sleep, and be at Gibson Steps for sunrise without driving a cliff road in the dark twice. One night there is the cheapest upgrade available on this entire trip.

State this plainly because it inverts for northern-hemisphere readers: Victoria is in the southern hemisphere, so December, January and February are summer and June, July and August are winter. Booking a "summer" trip for July is one of the more expensive mistakes available here. Temperatures below are typical seasonal ranges for the coast, not forecasts.

Whatever month you choose, pack for all of them. "Four seasons in one day" is a local saying about Victoria rather than a joke about it, and the exposed cliff tops at the Apostles are reliably colder and far windier than the forecast for the nearest town suggests. A still, warm afternoon in Apollo Bay can be a 20 km/h onshore wind at the viewing platform an hour and a half later.

Pro Tip

Victoria's coast changes weather in minutes. A packable shell lives in the day bag year-round.

Shop Columbia

Columbia Men's Watertight II Packable Rain Jacket

$60 on Amazon