The story of this place
After World War I, thousands of returned soldiers came home to find no work and no acknowledgment of what they had endured. In 1919, a scheme was launched to employ them building a road along Victoria's wild southern coastline. For 13 years, working with hand tools and explosives in one of the most hostile terrains in Australia — cliffs, thick forest, and Bass Strait storms — former soldiers blasted and dug the Great Ocean Road through impossibly difficult terrain. Many worked for a shilling a day.
The Great Ocean Road was dedicated in 1932 as the world's largest war memorial — built by the hands of those who had survived to honour those who had not. The Twelve Apostles — the iconic limestone stacks rising from the Southern Ocean — were created by the same forces that made the road necessary: the relentless erosion of the Bass Strait, which collapses stacks and creates new ones on geological time. There were originally nine apostles; two have collapsed since regular tourism began. Each collapse is recorded and mourned as a small death.