100 years of the Great Ocean Road

Updated

As weary soldiers returned from WWI, many swapped their guns for shovels and began work on Victoria's Great Ocean Road. But 100 years on, this engineering feat is under pressure from the relentless battering of the Southern Ocean and a booming tourism industry.

The indicator clicks in the quiet dawn air as we start our journey travelling east to west along Victoria's Great Ocean Road.

It has been 100 years since construction began on this national icon, which was carved into the landscape by shell-shocked soldiers who returned to Australia weary, but in need of employment.

With picks, shovels and dynamite they crafted a 243-kilometre road which surges along clifftops, ambles around rocky headlands and dips down to meet the sand.

There's a sense of tedious repetition that comes with the relentless beauty of this journey: slow down, pull over, attempt to capture the landscape on film, fail, repeat ad infinitum.

As the first light peeks through clouds at Bells Beach, a single longboarder bobs over incoming swell, waiting for a better wave.

A sea kayaker glides into the bay, sliding across the silver ocean before disappearing around the headland.

It's here that the traditional owners, the Wadawurrung people, once gathered and fished off the reef.

Signs of food preparation are still visible in an Aboriginal midden, a concentration of discarded shells.

But Bells Beach is also a symbol of the juggling act governments are yet to master, balancing a fragile environment, protective locals and a tourism industry bussing more and more sightseers to the region every year.

In a few hours the carpark will be lined with coaches.

Surfers will be asked to pose for photos as they change out of freezing wetsuits.

The public toilets aren't working so a cluster of haphazardly placed port-a-loos will have to suffice.

It's one of many sites along the Great Ocean Road where tourist operators say the natural beauty threatens to be usurped by a lacklustre visitor experience.

Along the road architectural masterpieces sit beside weather-beaten shacks storing summer holiday memories that span generations.

Steep driveways lead down to private oceanfront lairs, while in flatter topographies the road strides boldly over salt-covered front lawns.

A century ago, tents were all that construction workers had to protect themselves from the brutal storms whipping in off the Southern Ocean.

More than 3000 men built this road over 13 years, from 1919 to 1932, ending decades of isolation for coastal communities along its route.

With the sea crashing below, they lowered themselves on ropes and carved their own footholds before they could turn their attention to constructing the road itself.

Records are sketchy, but it's understood several of them died.

A tollgate once stood at Eastern View — before the road was handed over to the State Government in 1936 and tolls were abolished.

Today in its place stands a simple timber arch which has become the understated Great Ocean Road photo opportunity visitors clamour for.

There are only 16 car parks, yet more than 6 million people drive the Great Ocean Road each year — more than double the amount who visit the Great Barrier Reef.

Travellers seeking the perfect camera angle routinely ignore the warning signs and walk, camera raised, onto the road.

A bronze statue attempts to remind them the picturesque road is actually the world's longest war memorial.

A wad of discarded toilet paper sits on the sandy track to the beach.

It's late morning and the car pulls into Wye River, a village where 98 homes were destroyed in the 2015 Christmas Day bushfire.

Wye River General Store manager Shaun McKinlay says things are different since the fire.

"A lot of the properties and blocks changed hands," he says.

"Partly 'cause people just decided to take the opportunity to move on, some people couldn't afford to rebuild, weren't insured properly or at all."

For others it was the remoteness of the place which got to them.

"Even though we're on a really popular tourist route we're still remote in the sense that there's no services in town. Everything's a drive," he says.

"The older people get the more they feel they need to be close to services."

In recent years it has been hard to predict just how long that drive will take.

A roadwork blitz, by far the biggest of recent decades, is addressing many of the engineering issues which had been left to fester and crack.

Regional Roads Victoria's Paul Northey says recent state and federal funding has allowed his team to replace bridges, resurface damaged sections of the road, improve intersections and complete geotechnical works to strengthen the road and stabilise the rocky hillsides.

They've sent abseilers down the cliff-face to remove loose rocks and installed seven weather stations to help monitor soil moisture at high-risk landslip sites.

"We're doing our part to continue the original diggers' legacy by building an even greater ocean road," he says.

This construction blitz — along with the painstakingly slow pace of rebuilding fire-flattened properties — is changing towns like Wye River.

"There's a more consistent presence of the building industry in town," Mr McKinlay says.

"Winters have changed a lot since I came to the area."

Just outside Wye River a row of shipping containers line the edge of the Great Ocean Road.

Boulder-shaped indents in the metal are a reminder of the ever-present danger lurking in the ancient cliffs above.

In other sections, thick wire netting has been bolted into the rock face in a bid to keep the landslides at bay.

Great Ocean Road Tourism general manager Liz Price says the recent funding boost has been a long-awaited, but welcome relief.

"Prior to that there's been 20 years of under-investment so the road was not in good condition," she says.

"The infrastructure hasn't really had the investment to make sure that it has kept pace with the number of visitors."

Ms Price estimates that once the remedial works are done, the road will require $20 million a year to ensure it continues to offer a world class experience.

The roadworks are an inconvenience for locals, but Mr McKinlay chooses to focus on the positives.

"It helps you slow down and take in the view," he says.

In Kennett River, crowds gather on a narrow, gravel road while buses, minivans and hire cars choke the local cafe's tiny car park.

This unremarkable street is a well-known koala hotspot — and it doesn't disappoint.

Follow the gaze of camera lenses and in just a few seconds the first of many marsupials are revealed.

There's so many koalas in some sections of the Otways that in recent years wildlife officers have been catching females and implanting them with contraceptive devices.

Hundreds died of starvation after the population got so large they ate the manna gums bare.

It's a reminder of the delicate balancing act required to protect the environment while catering for a booming tourism industry.

It's something Jason Borg is very aware of.

The Environment, Land, Water and Planning Department project director has been tasked with implementing the Great Ocean Road Action Plan.

It includes setting up a standalone authority to take over from the many smaller agencies currently responsible for managing their own little patch.

The authority will be up and running by 2020 and is tasked with working out where infrastructure — such as parking, toilets and bus bays — are most urgently required.

It is hoped a less fragmented approach to infrastructure planning will lead to a better experience for tourists and locals.

"That whole coastal strip is one entity in itself and needs to be managed like that, as opposed to township by township," Mr Borg says.

"The visitor experience is not great because in some areas it's crowded, there's not enough infrastructure like toilets.

"The visitors are impacting on the liveability of communities."

In some areas the lack of infrastructure and growing number of tourists is already putting the environment at risk and causing tensions between travellers and locals.

"People are using the environment as opposed to using a toilet block," Mr Borg says.

Further along in Apollo Bay, there's real concern about the survival of this stretch of coastal road.

At Marengo, on the edge of town, sand has been carted in to reconstruct the disappearing beach.

The natural erosion, exacerbated by major winter storms in recent years, is threatening to take the road with it.

Melbourne University's David Kennedy, an associate professor in coastal geomorphology, says decisions need to be made now about whether to prioritise the beach or the road.

In sections where the bitumen sits on top of the sand dunes, it may not be possible to keep both, he says.

"You have to armour the coastline if the road is the priority," he says.

"Or if the beach is the priority then you've got to look at say shifting the road into another position."

One way to "armour the coastline" would be to build a kind of Great Ocean Wall — but Professor Kennedy warns any hard structure will increase erosion around it.

So while a wall might save the road from the encroaching ocean, it would likely result in the loss of the beach.

"My natural inclination is prioritise the natural landforms," he says.

"Ideally we'd shift the road, that would be the ideal situation, but in an economic area that may not actually be feasible.

"The other option, which is what they're starting to do which is quite good, is actually artificially move the sand ... trying to reconstruct the beach."

He says tough decisions can't be put off much longer.

"There's no magic bullet that will fix it," he says.

"It's a complex area but it's one that can be done with good, integrated coastal management."

The 12 Apostles — or the eight which remain — are the number one tourist destination on the Great Ocean Road.

There's a small visitor centre, toilet block, carpark and a safe walkway under the road, but this wildly popular site is still recognised as the one most in need of better tourist infrastructure.

Even on a wintery Tuesday afternoon the viewing platforms are jam-packed.

"The current experience is underwhelming," Ms Price says.

"It does not offer in any way, shape or form, a world class experience."

International postgraduate student Kay Xu is visiting the site with her friend Mary Wu, and says the Great Ocean Road is a well-known destination in China.

"The parents of international students from China, they always know about the Great Ocean Road," she says.

"So it's quite famous."

Social media sites including Instagram, Facebook and WeChat have helped grow its popularity.

"Based on their photos I'm really willing to come here," she says.

"I think driving along the sea and enjoying the fresh meal and the great sightseeing is really relaxing."

The Great Ocean Road was always meant to be a tourist destination.

When Geelong mayor Howard Hitchcock championed the idea more than 100 years ago he declared "it will be a memorial to benefit soldiers and give pleasure to thousands of tourists".

But even Councillor Hitchcock, who, when public subscriptions waned, chipped in 3000 pounds of his own money to ensure workers were paid, would have struggled to envision the success of the international marketing campaign which has made this a global tourism destination.

Tourism bosses like Ms Price say despite years of chronic underinvestment, the Great Ocean Road has exceeded all expectations.

"The visitor economy is a significant employer," she says.

"It's been an amazing, amazing legacy from those WWI soldiers working on the road."

Photos: Nicole Mills, Lorne Historical Society, ABC Open contributor Olly and Milly, Joanna Crothers, Kim Agius

Topics: environment, environmental-impact, environmental-management, travel-and-tourism, torquay-3228, wye-river-3221, kennett-river-3221, apollo-bay-3233

First posted