From Maits Rest car park, 17km west of Apollo Bay, you can take an easy stroll through a lovely fern gully, which gives a good idea of the dense rainforest that once covered the entire Otway Ranges.
The road now traces inland, right through the heart of the beautiful Otway National Park. Take the time to explore it. Malt's Rest is particularly popular with its series of boardwalks and on-site information weaving through the fernery. You can stroll through the rainforest at your leisure, tour by cycle or see it on horseback. Some of the trail rides last up to seven days. Some of the tallest trees in the world are found at the Otway Ranges. Giant mountain ash gums, enchanting fern gullies and thick stands of myrtle beech will delight you.
A little further down the road, towards Lavers Hill, there’s a turn-off to the Cape Otway Lighthouse, 14km along an unsealed road, where there’s pleasant accommodation in two renovated cottages, former residences of the lighthouse keepers ($95 and over). Fifteen thousand years ago this point was connected to the north-west tip of Tasmania, Australia's southern island state. More recently, however, in Australia's colonial days, it became known for the famous lighthouse. Ships which had been at sea for months without seeing land, saw this light as a welcoming symbol and a profound reassurance after crossing some of the world's loneliest seas.
You can take a guided tour of the grounds and the lighthouse (daily 9am–5pm; $5), as well as specialist tours such as a paleontology trip which focuses on prehistoric plants and animals, in particular one type of dinosaur unique to this area – the polar dinosaur. Advance booking necessary, enquire about prices (tel 03/5237 9240).
Bimbi Park (tel 03/5237 9246; on-site vans $31–45), about halfway along the road, is the only caravan park actually within the national park. The facilities and some of the cabins are quite basic but the setting is gorgeous – on a small farm with paddocks surrounded by bushland. The caravan park does excellent horse-riding excursions, one being a ride to Station Beach ($18; 1hr), a three-kilometre-long stretch of sand with freshwater springs and waterfalls.
Back on the Great Ocean Road, you momentarily return to the ocean at Castle Cove, a good lookout point across green, undulating dairy country. As you turn inland again, stepped hills rise sharply from the road as it passes turn-offs to Johanna, one of Victoria’s best-known surf beaches, and winds up towards LAVERS HILL, high in the Otway Range. The tiny town is characterized by its fern nursery and two cosy tearooms: the Gardenside Manor and the Blackwood Gully Tea Rooms & Tourist Centre, both of which serve light snacks and Devonshire teas daily from 10am. The Otway Junction Motor Inn offers more solid meals as well as motel-style accommodation. An alternative, and cheaper, place to stay is the Lavers Hill Roadhouse, where you have a choice of bunkhouses and on-site vans.
Three kilometres further is Melba Gully Conservation Park, one of the wettest spots in Victoria. It’s the location of the Big Tree, a three-hundred-year-old Otway messmate, its base covered in moss; at night glow-worms are a common sight.