May Squares #26 In Bloom

Postcards from The Great Ocean Road ~ Joining Becky for May Squares, featuring scenes along Victoria’s  iconic Great Ocean Road.

#SquaresRenew ~ moving forward, reconstructing, renewing or burgeoning

The heritage listed Great Ocean Road follows the coast of south-eastern Victoria from Torquay to Allansford for 241 kilometres, past beautiful sandy beaches and bays, through lush rainforests and over rugged limestone cliffs. Built by soldiers returned from World War One between 1919 and 1932, and dedicated to those who paid the ultimate sacrifice, the road is the world’s largest war memorial. Construction of the road provided employment for more than 3,000 returned servicemen, giving them purpose and providing much needed rehabilitation after the horrors of war. The Great Ocean Road linked towns along the coast previously only accessed by sea or tracks through the bush and created a route now acknowledged as one of the most scenic tourist drives in the world. 

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Western Headland, Port Campbell National Park

Springtime brings an abundance of wildflowers to the coastal heath on the cliff tops of Port Campbell National Park and, by the time we arrived at the start of October, they were blooming everywhere. 

• Prickly Tea Tree, laden with tiny white flowers and scented leaves 

• Port Campbell guinea-flower, endemic to this area and found only on the cliffs between Port Campbell and Peterborough

• also native to this part of Victoria, Australian pig face or sea fig

• Xanthorrhoea australis, the grass tree – its tall spike covered in hundreds of miniature white flowers, each perfectly formed with six tiny petals. The flowers, full of nectar, are a magnet for honey-eaters. 

And many others we couldn’t identify but whose beauty stopped us in our tracks. 

It was hard to decide which was more spectacular – the wildflowers or the view.