Australia’s Great Ocean Walk: Stunning Scenery Down Under

Are you looking for a chance to fulfill a lifelong dream of going Down Under?  Has Australia always called you and you’re looking for a chance to get down there?  I visited the great nation of Australia and found a fantastic way to create cheap Australian holidays, by spending a week hiking the Great Ocean Walk.

What could be cheaper than a walking holiday? I carried all the food I needed on my back, and there were no toll booths, no expensive admissions, just some of the most beautiful scenery I’ve ever seen!  Here is an excerpt of the article about the Great Ocean Walk, that was published on GoNOMAD about the trip.

The trail is set up for both long-haul hikers and those who want do just dip in for a day or two. Most people complete the entire trail’s length is between five and seven nights.

“My guide Greg and I set out at about 9 am from Apollo Bay, and in the first ten minutes, we spotted a swamp wallaby in the bush. It’s not the woods, he told me, it’s the bush, and it’s not lumber they cut, it’s timber. Gotta get the Aussie vernacular right!

The walk took us over a muddy former logging road and later back into the woods. Towering eucalyptus trees with bark hanging down were the mainstay of the forest, and in places, there was the deep cover of waist-high ferns. Then we saw some ferns the size of a human, it looked like they were out of Jurassic Park.

It wasn’t long before we spotted another common animal here, a koala, who sat sleeping up in the low branches of trees, or occasionally munching on leaves. These creatures were so docile that we reached up to pet it, and he posed happily for photos as we got as close as two feet.

As we walked on the trail wound its way over to the top of towering cliffs, and far down below the ocean waves crashed on a deserted shore. Shipwrecks were very common here and on one beach we came upon several pieces of wood that were part of a ship that came over from the US to carry materials that were to be exhibited at the Great Exposition of 1880 in Melbourne. But the crowds never got to see them since the ship splintered apart on the rocks.”

While the beginning of the trail had taken us over former logging roads and sometime far away from the main attraction–the ocean–in the next few days we got closer to the shore, and caught many amazing vistas of the remote beaches that lie below this fantastic trail.

And at the very end, after a 91 kilometer trek, our great prize awaited: the magnficent Twelve Apostles, 300-foot tall limestone edifices that are constantly being eroded by the sea and undergo changes every day. ”

Read more articles about Australia on GoNOMAD.com