Today the Great Ocean Road is recognised as one of the most beautiful scenic drives anywhere in the world. It regularly ranks in the Top Ten of any coastal drives globally.

From its beginning in Torquay to its end at Allansford, just near Warnambool, the Great Ocean Road features 243 kilometres of sweeping bends, that rise and fall along its route, with each corner revealing another glorious ocean view.

As you drive along this iconic scenic route, taking in Anglesea, Lorne, Wye River, Apollo Bay and Port Campbell, watching ocean waves roll in endlessly from a turquoise ocean under a stunning blue sky, it’s easy to forget that this is not just a road, it is in fact the world’s longest war memorial.

The story of its building and the men who built it deserves telling for it is a story of a memorable road, that is in fact a road memorial.

The need for the Great Ocean Road

Prior to the building of this Great Ocean Road, the many small fishing villages and hamlets that dotted what we now call the Victorian Shipwreck Coast, were extremely isolated – both from each other and from the rest of Victoria.

To get from one village to the next, you had two choices:

You could catch a coach (or drive) for miles inland on a dirt track that lead to the main inland highway. Drive along that highway, then drive all the way back to the coast along another dirt track.

Sometimes two fishing villages just 10 miles apart from each other on the coast, required an inland round road trip of 50 miles just to get from one to the other.

Of course, the other solution was to sail a boat the 10 miles around the coast. Which was OK if you had a boat. But if you didn’t the inland route was your only option.

Anyone living in Lorne who wanted to get to Geelong or Melbourne needed to take a coach along a rough track for hours to connect with a train at Winchelsea.

So there had been a demand to build a coastal road for many years.

But what the government didn’t have was the money, the motivation or the manpower.

The First World War changed all of that.

The birth of Australia’s greatest coastal drive

After the WWI, thousands of men returned to their homes to find their jobs gone, their former employer’s businesses closed down or other reasons they could not restart their previous lives.

Not only that, many were “shellshocked” from the horrors of what they had witnessed on the battlefield and were not really in any shape to take up their old jobs anyway. (That was the original term for what we now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.)

These men needed productive work. Not just for their bank balances but for their souls as well. (It was well recognised long ago, more so than now, that the solution for many mental disorders is actually physical labour.)

So, there was now a ready workforce. And more demand. Car travel was increasing after the war. The time for a great road that would wind along the Victorian coastline had come. But there was still money needed to fund it.

The man who made the world’s greatest war memorial possible

If one man could be called the father of the Great Ocean Road, it was the mayor of Geelong, Alderman Howard Hitchcock who brought the plan to life. He formed the Great Ocean Road Trust, then worked to raise the money needed for the project. He raised over 80,000 pounds from private subscription, including 3,000 pounds he contributed himself. The plan was to repay the money by charging tolls on the road.

When the money was finally raised, some 3,000 men were assembled for the project. 

These former soldiers decided right from the start that their work would not just connect communities along the coast, but also honour the 60,000 of their comrades who had fallen in the First World War. 

They took it upon themselves to name certain locations along the road after locations from The Great War. That’s why names like The Somme, Mount Defiance and Shrapnel Gully still exist to this day.

A Great Ocean Road and the men who built it

At the time heavy earth-moving equipment was in short supply. So the men did most of the work by hand using picks and shovels to move countless tons of rock and dirt, carving a windy, sinuous route along the cliff face. Occasionally some explosives were made available to help them blast out huge rocks out of the way.

The work was slow. The men faced difficult terrain, dense wilderness and bad weather. Progress was slow. Sometimes the men complete only around 3km in a whole month. Some days there were hundreds of men working, sometimes just a handful.

But they were all paid well. Returned soldiers earnt 10 shillings and sixpence per day – more than the six shillings a day they were paid during the war. 

His made the work popular, but still arduous. The soldiers worked 8 hours per day, sleeping rough in the bush in old army tents. These mobile tent cities moved along the road with the workers as they progressed.

13 years to make an ocean road 243 km long

Building the Great Ocean Road was tough work. It took the men 13 years to carve out 243 km of winding road from the cliff face.

Official figures don’t exist but it is known that “several” men died during the construction work. But many thrived. The fresh sea air and the hard labour restored the sanity of many after the nightmares of the trenches of WWI.

They took great pride in their work. The road we experience today is a testimony to their legacy. And everyone who drives on it should honour that memory.

Sadly, Mayor Hitchcock, the man who was the visionary behind the road, never lived to see its official opening.

The first section of the old Great Ocean Road, from Eastern View to Lorne, was opened on 18th March 1922. But it would be another decade before the entire length, down to just outside Warnambool would be finished.

When the full stretch of the Great Ocean Road finally opened on 26 November, 1932, it was a muddy, dirt road. A single lane track, all the way with few places for vehicles to pass each other. There were no lookouts to stop at along the way. No roadside service stations offering cool drinks and hot food. And the only accommodation was often an old hotel room. It was before the advent of the “motel”.

A toll gate was opened at Eastern View, where a memorial arch was erected. Car drivers paid 2 shillings and sixpence. A passenger one shilling and sixpence. Tolls were abolished and the tollgate dismantled when the Trust officially handed the road over to the State Government on 2 October 1936.

But the Memorial Arch remained. But it has had its own history. The first Memorial Arch was replaced when the road was widened to dual lanes. After many years that version was torn down as it was deemed unsafe. Its replacement was burned down in the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires. Then the next version was damaged in a mini cyclone in the 1990s. 

How the Great Ocean Road changed Victoria’s coastline forever

The opening of this iconic ocean road ended the isolation felt by many in places like Lorne, Apollo Bay and other coastal communities.

Early road trippers were a determined lot. It could take several hours to drive from Anglesea to Lorne. Today you’ll do it comfortably in 40 minutes.

But it is tourism today that brings so much to the communities along the coast. 

Over 7 million people per year drive along the Great Ocean Road in private cars and on motorbikes, in tour buses large and small. On their way to the Twelve Apostles, hoping to catch a glimpse of a koala, kangaroo or wallaby. They wind their way past Bells Beach, the Split Point Lighthouse and the Cape Otway Lighthouse.

The road is two-lanes all the way and has plenty of safe passing points for cars and bikes. There are many places to stop for refreshment or to take in an amazing view. Mt Defiance Lookout perhaps the most popular.

The road has been reinforced with barriers to make the trip safer, as well as wire netting to prevent landslides and rockfalls.

It has never been a safer, more beautiful road to travel than it is today. And as you sweep around the many bends, breathtaking views of sweeping ocean scenery stretching as far as the eye can see, spare a thought for the men who laboured so hard and so long to create it for you.

That’s why it’s important that everyone who travels the Great Ocean Road stops at the Memorial Arch. Not just to take a photo of themselves and their friends with the Arch in the background. But to pause for a moment at the memorial to pay homage to the men who built this great road.

Men who had been prepared to lay down their lives for their country. And who came back only to find some of them giving their lives to build a road. 

Read their story. Look at their memorial. And say a silent thank you to all of them who laboured so hard for so long to create what is truly one of the most spectacular ocean drives anywhere in the world.

And in that moment of silence recognise the sacrifice of their comrades and recognise that this is a War Memorial. Built by these diggers to honour their fallen mates.

Your reflection will not take away your enjoyment of the drive. But it will give you something to reflect on as you watch those endless waves rolling in on sun-drenched beaches of golden sands and clifftop views that simply take your breath away.