I skipped the Great Ocean Road’s most famous landmark entirely and found a crowd-free bay that hit harder than any postcard ever could. 

My sister and I drove the entire Great Ocean Road and skipped the Twelve Apostles. On purpose. And I’d do it again. 

Just to be clear, I’m not dissing the Apostles. They’re a genuine natural wonder, and I get why they’re on every bucket list. But somewhere between the queues, the car park and the fact that I was watching a koala shimmy up a tree with my own eyes earlier that day, I realised the Apostles were never actually the point. They’re just the postcard. The road is the point. 

We started backwards, and it was the best decision we made 

Most people do the Great Ocean Road from Melbourne heading west, hit the Apostles as the grand finale, then turn around. We flipped it. We started in Port Fairy, Australia’s best festival town, and worked our way back towards Melbourne. 

Night one was at Basalt Retreat, in a little vineyard villa called Villa Pinot Noir, which is exactly as good as it sounds. The next morning, we went to Tower Hill Wildlife Reserve, a volcanic crater turned nature reserve, and I saw my first-ever wild koala. 

An actual koala, doing its own thing, in a tree, in the wild. I was more excited about that than I will admit. 

The bit nobody tells you about: the Bay of Islands 

We drove the coast, ticked off most of the icons, and then we got to Port Campbell National Park, where things became spectacular. We stood at the Poombeeyt Koontapool Lookout and watched the blowhole doing its thing at Loch Ard Gorge. We saw The Grotto, which looks like something out of a fantasy film. But the moment that actually stopped me in my tracks was the Bay of Islands. 

If you’ve never been – imagine the Twelve Apostles, but with no crowds, no queue for the carpark, no jostling for a photo spot. Just you, the cliffs, and a coastline that looks like it was designed by someone showing off. The Bay of Martyrs, just down the road, is cut from the same cloth. Honestly, between the two of them, I got everything I wanted visually from “iconic limestone stacks" without a single elbow in my ribs. 

Sleeping in the treetops with the kangaroos 

From there, we headed into the Otways to Sky Pods, which is one of the coolest places I’ve ever stayed. Our pod was perched overlooking the cliff, and apparently it gets wild up there when the wind picks up, but we lucked out with a dead calm evening, kangaroos grazing right in front, and a property so big it felt like we had the whole forest to ourselves. It’s fully self-contained, so we cooked dinner, put the fire on, and just sat there taking it all in. 

Seafood, retro motels and a Greek dinner that hit different 

The next day, we had lunch at the Apollo Bay Fishermen’s Co-Op, which is one of those places that’s iconic for a reason – the seafood platter did not miss. Then it was on to Anglesea, where we stayed at The Monty, a retro motel that’s been renovated within an inch of its life and made even cooler for it. Dinner that night was at Ela in Torquay, a Greek restaurant that I’d happily drive back for on its own merits. 

My sister surfs; I ice bathe

The next morning, we had a surf lesson with Go Ride a Wave in Torquay. My sister was, annoyingly, a natural. I was more of an “enthusiastic participant" than a surfer, but that’s fine, because I redeemed myself later that day at About Time Bathhouse. 

I first tried hot-cold therapy in Bali back in 2024, and I have been chasing that feeling ever since, so this was a highlight for me. They’ve got a few ice baths ranging from 8°C to 11°C, and yes, I went in all of them. There’s something about being in that cold that just flips a switch in my brain – it’s honestly a bit of a thrill. I had just finished one of my plunges when an older lady, a regular, told me it was impressive, and that the only other person she’d seen handle it like that was a Scottish guy who went fully under and sat on the bottom of the pool. I have thought about that compliment more than is probably healthy. My sister owned the surfing; I owned the ice baths. Balance restored. 

We closed the trip out with dinner at The Monty’s Nina Cantina, then drove back to Melbourne the next morning, completely satisfied with a Great Ocean Road trip that didn’t include its most famous landmark. 

So, about that Twelve Apostles tourist tax 

Here’s the thing that actually pushed me to write this. If you’ve been paying attention to Great Ocean Road news lately, you’ll know the Twelve Apostles are getting a shake-up. The site currently pulls in more than two million visitors a year, and it’s starting to show. According to Liz Price, general manager of Great Ocean Road Regional Tourism, 2019 was rough at the site – overcrowded, with people parking on the roadside and walking across fragile ground because there simply wasn’t the infrastructure to handle the numbers. And it’s only heading in one direction: pre-Covid visitor numbers were tracking toward six to eight million a year before growth was interrupted. 

The response is a new $126 million Visitor Experience Centre, plus, controversially, an entry fee. Before you picture a cash grab, it’s worth knowing the fee isn’t just about paying to see the view – it’s part of a broader sustainability push, funding a proper visitor precinct with parking, food and beverage options, and better facilities than the current setup, which Liz describes as little more than a small building with toilets, a modest kiosk and limited parking, where visitors currently just pull up, glance at the view and leave. The exact cost hasn’t been locked in yet, and it’ll likely work alongside a new timed booking system designed to spread crowds out instead of dumping everyone at the lookout at once. 

I actually think this is a good move, and not just because it validates my decision to skip the place entirely. Overtourism doesn’t just wreck the view for the next person – it wrecks the actual site, the cliffs, the ecosystem, the whole reason anyone wanted to go there in the first place. A modest fee that funds conservation and a proper booking system so you’re not fighting a bus tour for a photo spot seems like a fair trade. 

But it also proves my point. If the Apostles need a tax and a booking system just to be bearable, and the Bay of Islands gives me the same jaw-dropping moment with zero crowds and zero fees, why would I queue? 

The road is the destination, not the postcard 

I’m not telling you to skip the Twelve Apostles forever – go see them, especially once the new centre opens and the crowd management actually kicks in, because they’re spectacular and they deserve a proper visit, not a drive-by. But I am telling you that if you’re tight on time, or the queues are horrendous, or you just fancy doing things differently, the Great Ocean Road doesn’t fall apart without them. Between wild koalas, empty limestone bays, cliffside pods full of kangaroos, ice baths that fuel your ego, and a sister who’s astronomically better than you at surfing, there’s more than enough road trip here without ever stepping foot near that carpark. 

Sometimes the best souvenir isn’t the photo everyone else has. It’s the one nobody else got.