OTWAY RANGES, VIC — The Great Ocean Road is a scenic highway in southern Victoria which begins at Torquay and extends west for 243 km, ending at Allansford, just east of Warrnambool.
Hailed as an engineering feat for its time, the road was built by around 3000 returned servicemen, or Diggers, following the end of World War I.
The concept of such a road was first put forward as early as the 1870s. Settlers along the coast could only reach the larger communities inland via rough tracks over the Otway ranges, so calls were made for either a rail or road route connecting these otherwise isolated coastal settlements.
Shortly after Geelong businessmen E.H. Lascelles and Walter Howard Smith proposed a road be built between Geelong and Lorne, the Country Roads Board (CRB) was formed in 1912.
Following World War I, Country Roads Board (CRB, now VicRoads) chairman William Calder suggested that returned Diggers be gainfully employed on various road projects, including a road extending from Barwon Heads to Warrnambool.
The plan was soundly approved by the Mayor of Geelong, Howard Hitchcock, who saw not only the value in such a road for tourism, but also as a permanent memorial to the many thousands of soldiers who lost their lives in the Great War.
The Great Ocean Road Trust was officially formed on March 22, 1918, and surveying began in August of that year.
On September 19, 1919, the project to construct the Great Ocean Road was officially launched by the Premier of Victoria, Harry Lawson.
Taking 13 years to complete, the road is regarded as a tremendous engineering feat for the 1920s.
With the absence of any machinery at the time, it required back-breaking manual labour as the men had only shovels, picks and horse-drawn carts to hew out the rocky cliffside.
The first section, extending from Lorne to the Eastern View section of the Great Ocean Road, was officially opened on March 18, 1922. The second official opening occurred on April 27, 1932, and this celebrated the extension of the road to Warrnambool.
Although modernised since its original construction, the Great Ocean Road continues to stand as the world’s largest memorial to the soldiers of World War I.
