The region beyond the small town of Nelson, past the Surfing beach at the curiously named Port Fairy, is known locally as the Shipwreck Coast. Over the years nearly seven hundred ships have crashed against the rocks here, the most famous being the Loch Ard in 1878. So the story goes a young sailor called Tom Pierce swam back into the ocean to rescue his sweetheart after having already made it safely to land himself, and the young couple clung to each other in a rocky inlet overnight before Tom climbed the cliffs to get help the next morning - the rocky inlet is now a major attraction near Port Campbell known, unsurprisingly, as Loch Ard Gorge. Near to Loch Ard are Thunder cave and the Blowhole, which naturally have their own stories attached - according to a metal information plate attached to the overlook, wax phosphorous matches washed in from the wreck of the Loch Ard caused the cave to be lit with an eerie purple glow for several nights afterwards, illuminating the bodies floating in the cove. I hate to think what stories the people around here tell at Halloween! I particularly liked the way that some of these attractions were arranged - because they are so close together, there is a wooden walkway which leads from the road into a patch of woodland and then splits to make it's way along the coast in two directions, taking visitors out to the various overlooks via a mixture of wooden and paved pathways with benches for resting along the way. In this way, it's both difficult to miss anything and easy to get to the sites which otherwise would involve scrambling across jagged rocks and be quite inaccessible for older or disabled visitors - they seem to be very good at getting people to the sights in Australia.

Nearby, London Bridge (or "London Arch" as it is now officially known) is a natural rock archway just off the South Coast in Port Campbell National Park. Until 1990 London Bridge was attached to the mainland and formed two archways which bore a striking resemblance to the original London landmark of the same name, but then nature took a hand and the central section fell unexpectedly into the sea one day. In fact, it is said to have happened so unexpectedly that a tour party had only just returned from walking out onto the end of the bridge when it collapsed behind them.

According to the oft told story, all but two of the tour group had returned to the mainland and only a young couple remained stranded on the other side after the central arch collapsed. Within half an hour, news crews had converged on the area from Adelaide and Melbourne and helicopters were circling the unfortunate couple stranded on top of the newly created single arch, long lenses zooming in on their predicament - but for some reason, neither of them seemed particularly interested in being seen on national television and they cowered on their little island making every attempt to cover their faces. It turns out, according to the story, that the young couple were married - although not to each other. I think this is what is generally known as Karma. Or possibly poetic justice. It is also, unfortunately, an urban legend.

Perhaps the most famous of the natural sites along the Great Ocean Road is the Twelve Apostles, limestone stacks rising from the sea and created through millions of years of erosion from the constant pounding of the waves and the wind. These stacks were probably created in a similar fashion to the limestone stacks back in Phnang-Nga Bay in Thailand, only the effect is of course far less dramatic. Weaker areas of the limestone were worn away first, leaving arches of harder stone such as London Bridge. Over the years the bridges themselves have collapsed into the sea and been washed away, leaving only the support columns rising from the surf - there is a very real possibility that even the remaining arch of London Bridge will collapse at some point, and it will become London Stacks. Originally known as the Sow and Piglets until somebody pointed out that The Twelve Apostles would be slightly better for tourism, only eight of the stacks can be seen from the lookout. This tends to cause a little confusion and tourists often go away and tell how some of the stacks have crumbled and been washed away - in fact, they are simply out of sight. The Twelve Apostles is also another of those Australian landmarks which is worth a revisit throughout the day - because the softer limestone is washed away before the harder parts of the rock, the stacks are carved into strange shapes which cast shadows and reveal different colours as the sun moves around them throughout the day. In the same way as a visit to Uluru is a totally different experience at sunrise or sunset, the Twelve Apostles only really show off their spectacular colours if you return to view them with the sun shining from every angle - the full effect only being seen as the sun finally begins to descend below the horizon. Erosion continues day by day, and the shape of this coast can only change as it does - who knows what attractions future visitors will find here as new caves and arches are carved out. Inevitably stacks will fall and others will be created, but as long as the Great Ocean Road remains to bring people here, there will always be something to see.

Towards the end of the tour, we parked up in the Otway National Park (that's right - another one) and were led through quite thick forest by our guide. This really felt like getting back to nature - the trails were less made up and paved than they had been back at the Grampians, and we often had to climb over fallen trees or make our way off the trail to avoid some other sort of natural blockage. Unfortunately, we just didn't have enough time in the park though, so Otway is another place I'm going to have to add to my growing list of places to return to. A simple search for photographs on the internet shows that the park is full of waterfalls, thick forests and more of the vast canyons which seem to be the trademark of this part of the country. There is also, apparently, a forest canopy walk in the Otway National Park which allows visitors to climb up into the treetops and walk around on rope bridges looking down at the forest - something which I'm sure we would've loved to have done given the time - but as it turned out, we had a much better chance to get to grips with a forest canopy later on in the tour, when we reached the cloudforests of Costa Rica. The walk through the Otway forest was a great way to end the tour, though, with the only sound being that of our footsteps and the birds in the trees. At one point, we came across a hollowed out tree stump, presumably carved by termites or the like, which seemed to be almost custom built for a photo opportunity - so Eloise, Sarah and myself took it in turns to sit inside and have our photos taken with the forest all around. The results, I think, show just how beautiful and remote some of the forests around here truly are.

It amazes me that there seems to be so much disagreement about exactly where the Great Ocean Road begins and ends, something which I guess you probably can't understand unless you are a typically laid back Australian. Back in London, I've had people almost start a physical fight with me over a simple passing comment that I used to live in North London - even though the road signs all clearly state that my town was a "London borough", suggesting to some people that a small town in Middlesex is part of London still used to send them into a frenzy of anger. In Australia, it really doesn't seem to bother people in the slightest that nobody can make up their mind where the famous Great Ocean Road begins or ends. This is even stranger when you consider that they've actually made a real effort to make it totally clear - at either end of the official road, a giant metal framework has been erected across the entire street proclaiming that you are entering or leaving the Great Ocean Road, so it seems to me that there really ought to be little room for doubt.

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.