Great Ocean Road

Even if you have only the slightest bit of surf style in you, prepare to swoon when you reach Bells Beach. This is Australia's most famous surf break (it was here that Patrick Swayze swam out into the killer wave in the final scene of Point Break) and scene of the Easter Rip Curl Pro competition. There are great vantage points along the cliffs to watch the wave riders, or take the steps down onto the beach and join them. This isn't, however, any sort of place to learn to surf, though you can do that just down the road at Anglesea.

Detour off the coast and into the folds of the rainforest-smothered Otway Range to find the small, reinvented town of Forrest. Life in the former logging town now revolves around bicycles and beer, with more than 60 kilometres of world-class, purpose-built mountain-bike trails coiling through the bush outside of town. When the day's riding is done, join all the other cyclists at the Forrest Brewing Company, where, beneath the bikes hanging from the ceiling, you can work through the list of more than half-a-dozen craft beers and the ever-changing seasonal menu in the relaxed restaurant.

Another often-overlooked highlight of the Great Ocean Road is the plethora of stunning waterfalls skidding through the rainforest of the Otway Range. Just four kilometres down the road from Otway Fly Treetop Adventures is the start of the walking track to one of the most beautiful of them, Triplet Falls, pouring over cliffs into an enclosure of ferns. The one-kilometre walk to the falls passes beneath stands of mountain ash, the tallest flowering plant in the world. (Please note, there are quite a few stairs so it could be a little hard if you’re with small children or have a dodgy knee…)

If the coast is the star feature of the Great Ocean Road, the thick pelt of rainforest across the Otway Range isn't far behind. At Otway Fly Treetop Adventures, you can immerse yourself in that forest, striding out on a suspended metal walkway through the canopy of the rainforest, 25 metres off the ground. Get an extra buzz by climbing the 45-metre-high tower that sways in the wind, or join a zipline tour, whirring and squealing through the trees, suspended from a wire, 30 metres above the forest floor.

The western end of the Great Ocean Road threads through an area known as the Shipwreck Coast...with good reason. More than 600 vessels have come a cropper along this coastline, and if you take the 350 steps down onto Wreck Beach you'll find the rusting anchors of the Marie Gabrielle and the Fiji embedded among rock pools. If you want to stretch the legs a little more, this is a good spot for it, with Wreck Beach part of the 100-kilometre-long Great Ocean Walk. Turn east and walk to Gable Lookout and you'll soon be standing atop some of the highest sea cliffs in mainland Australia. And you can see forever!

The Great Ocean Road's headline act is this ellipsis of ever-crumbling limestone sea stacks just outside the town of Peterborough. Count the stacks and you'll quickly discover the error in the name - there are only eight of them (calling them the Eight Crumbling Stacks would probably have ruined the moment for everyone) - but don't let the facts get in the way of such sublime scenery. A boardwalk connects a series of viewing platforms atop the cliffs, providing views of the wild Southern Ocean as it wraps itself around the stacks.

Rare is the opportunity to stand on the coast and watch a bay full of whales, but that chance comes every year at Logans Beach in Warrnambool. Here, between June and September, southern right whales return from sub-Antarctic waters to calve in the coastal waters. Sighting them is simplicity itself with a long wooden viewing platform built into the dunes behind the beach. Mothers and calves can often be seen within 100 metres of shore.