Our experience of the Great Ocean Road was like being on a tourist hop-on hop-off bus. As we drove along the road there'd be a short turning off to the right every ten minutes or so to see some creatively named coastline attraction.

Over three days we made our way from Mount Gambia in South Australia to Torquay in Victoria. The first part of the journey the weather was cloudy and the scenery pretty dull so I slept for a lot of it. We stopped for lunch to eat our homemade sandwiches in Port Fairy - a town which the Rough Guide describe as quaint, but was similar to most small towns with an addition of a few 'boutique' shops.

The main part of the Great Ocean Road begins not long after Port Fairy at Warrnambool. The road was built between 1919 and 1932 as a way of creating jobs for veterans after the first world war, and to act as a memorial for those who had died.

The first stop to hop off at was called Bay of Islands. If you have New Zealand's Bay of Islands in mind then wipe that memory from your head. The Great Ocean Road's Bay of Islands were lumps of rock scattered just off shore. Interesting in their own way, made even better by the sun breaking through the grey cloud to made a moody effect. As we took a few photos the wind howled off the sea and battered our faces - I guess in some ways we could have been in New Zealand!

We drove a few kilometres further before seeing the sign for The Grotto. We parked up and along with everyone else and their dog we made our way down the steps to a piece of cliff with a large hole in it allowing the sea water to gush in.

London Bridge was next. Here we saw an arched rock standing in the sea. The weathering to this natural feature was made more exciting by an event in 1990. Up until then the arch was attached to the cliff to form a bridge that tourists could walk over. A section collapsed one day leaving a couple on the far side. They were rescued by helicopter but I can't imagine them being in a rush to get home as it came out that they were having an affair!

Further along the road we stopped at the Arch and Sentinel Rock. Then onto Loch Ard Gorge. We ummed and ahhhed about whether to bother stopping at this one but the car park was packed with tour buses and crowds of people so we assumed it was worth a look. There was a very picturesque cove, the sort of place Captain Cook would have fetched up with a broken ship. However, this cove was used as a shelter by two teenagers in 1878 after the boat they were on from England to Melbourne had been damaged, killing the other 53 people onboard.

The last main viewing point on the road is the Sow and Piglets. Oh sorry, that's what they used to be called - they are now the Twelve Apostles. I guess advertising scenic flights over the Sow and Piglets just doesn't have the same pull as over the Twelve Apostles. These rocks dotted along the coast are the most well known and photographed. We captured the moody light like at the Bay of Islands but didn't hang around too long as we were freezing cold from the wind.

With most of the sight seeing out the way we just had a couple of towns to look at before reaching the end of the Great Ocean Road. We stayed over night at Apollo Bay. This has to be one of, if not the most attractive settings for a town we've seen in Australia so far. We came over the hill with the beach to the right and houses nestled in the green foothills to the left. It felt very English. What we hadn't banked on was a pedal bike competition going on and all accommodation booked. However, we rang one campsite and managed to get a spot on their front lawn.

The next day we took the winding road round the coast passing through the pretty village of Wye River and onto Torquay. It took us the whole day as we got caught up in the road closures for the bike race. We called into Bells Beach which is one of the worlds most famous surf beaches and is featured in one of my favourite films, Point Break. Unfortunately the surf wasn't quite like the fifty-year storm in the film, but it was good just being there.

Katy