Located South east of Melbourne beyond the Bellarine Peninsula, the Surf Coast is a 55km stretch of coastline from Torquay to Anglesea. The Surf Coast is one of Melbourne’s most popular recreational playgrounds. Besides world famous surf beaches and sophisticated beach culture, the region boasts natural beauty, both on the coast and the hinterland.
The beaches of the Surf Coast are the centre and focus of Victoria’s surfing and beach culture. Surfing brands Rip Curl and Quiksilver started in here, and names like Bells Beach, Torquay and Jan Juc are synomimous with surfing in Australia.
The southern section of the Surf Coast is backed by the Otway Range, which lies within Great Otway National Park. The Park contains a diverse range of landscapes and vegetation types, and covers both coastline and hinterland in the Otway Ranges and so includes both beaches and forest, accessible via walking trails through rainforests, fern gullies and besides fast flowing streams and waterfalls.
One of Australia’s great drives, the 273 km Great Ocean Road winds its way from Torquay to Warrnambool on the south west coast alongside some of the most dramatically scenic seascapes in the world.
It was constructed by ex-servicemen and the unemployed between 1918 and 1932 and is dedicated to those that lost their lives in World War I. The most well known feature in the region is The Twelve Apostles rock formation near Port Campbell, carved out of the limestone headlands by rough seas over time.
How To Get There
By road west from Melbourne via Geelong, the Bellarine Peninsula. From Adelaide, South Australia, Victoria's Surf Coast can be reached by driving east into Victoria from Mt Gambier via the Princes Highway.
Best Time To Go
As Victoria has a temperate climate, there is no one season or month that the visitor needs to avoid, except perhaps summer (December – February), if you find hot weather unbearable. In and around Melbourne, which gets more cloud and disturbed weather despite a lower rainfall, sunshine hours per day in winter (June – August) are three to four as against seven to eight in summer. Cold spells are brief and never severe on the coast, and temperatures can drop much lower inland in winter.
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