What it's like to hike Australia's Great Ocean Walk

After inspecting the steep staircase, which tumbles down the golden cliff in fits and starts then disappears out of view, our small band of hikers is faced with a dilemma. Do we dare go down or do we commit to the narrow forest trail we’re already on?

Since striking out from Blanket Bay, a trailhead campground outside the town of Apollo Bay on Victoria’s southwest coast, our journey along the Great Ocean Walk has been uncomplicated. We’ve walked beneath crooked eucalypt forests where we’ve searched for koalas dozing in the canopy, listened to the flurry of crimson rosellas flitting between the trees and found shy wallabies munching on mushrooms. Now the winding trail has led to a dramatic fork above Wreck Beach. Below us, a century’s worth of tides have buried and exposed two shipwrecks, offering a tantalising glimpse into Victoria’s maritime past. But seeing the wrecks comes with a gamble.

“It’s 366 wooden steps down to Wreck Beach. We could get down there and find the tide has come too far in, which means a hard climb back to where we started with nothing to show for it,” says Joe Lionnet, while rubbing his salt and pepper beard. Despite our guide’s words of caution, the wry smile on his face and the glint in his bespectacled eyes hints that he hopes we’ll choose the steps.

Our group splits and just a handful of us descend, plunging down with no idea what lies ahead. But our gamble pays off and we’re soon standing on a wide sandy beach as the wind whistles along the imperious cliffs looming overhead.

Ordinarily it takes a week to complete the 68-mile Great Ocean Walk, one of the Australia’s best multi-day hikes, which starts in Apollo Bay and winds its way through two of Victoria’s coastal national parks before culminating at the Twelve Apostles — a series of serrated limestone spires staggered along the cliffs near Port Campbell.

With only a weekend to spare, I’ve instead joined Australian Walking Company’s new guided trek, which offers a more condensed experience, traversing nearly 19 miles over three days. Our group has spent time navigating quiet mushroom-studded gullies and exposed clifftop tracks, before retiring to the company’s lodgings in Johanna, near the trail’s midway point, in time for sundowners and meals of wild venison and grilled crayfish.

The next day we do it all again, using the company’s van to travel to the next trailhead on the route. Driving to these starting points means travelling along sections of the walk’s more famous counterpart, the Great Ocean Road, which runs alongside us for stretches before disappearing inland and coming back again. Ranked as one of the world’s most scenic driving routes, the 151-mile road ducks and weaves between sleepy coastal towns, passing epic surf breaks and waterfalls, en route to our shared destination, the Twelve Apostles.

Before it was either a great walk or a great road, this same section of coastline was known by a far more ominous moniker: the Shipwreck Coast. This treacherous strip, with its hidden reefs and changeable conditions, claimed an estimated 660 ships in the mid-19th century, when Victoria’s Gold Rush was in full swing.

It’s not that these waters are more perilous than those elsewhere. Melbourne’s sudden wealth in the 1850s made it one of the richest cities in the world, and thousands of ships set sail to it in search of wealth. Many found only disaster — their tales of tragedy, survival, loss and even love washing up on the shore with the survivors. “More ships mean more accidents,” as Joe puts it bluntly, while standing at the edge of a rockpool where the rusted anchor of the Marie Gabrielle juts out of the water.

The Marie Gabrielle was one of the lucky ones. The ship smashed into Wreck Beach while attempting to deliver tea in 1869. All the crew survived but the vessel was ripped to shreds. The Fiji, whose anchor we find just a few hundred metres away, was less fortunate when it ran into strife in 1891. Joe explains how a photographer documenting the unfolding calamity may have inadvertently caused the deaths of Fiji’s crew by delaying emergency services. On the cliff above us, we spot a sombre memorial overlooking the scene, a white tombstone honours the drowned sailors and the cook, ‘name unknown’, who died with them.

There’s no time to dwell on their fate. The tide is coming in fast and Joe leads us on a thrilling dash across the beach, clambering over small boulders and timing our run between the waves, to reach the ascending staircase on the far side of the beach. We rejoin the rest of the group and the trail, which now descends into coastal wetlands.

Soon we’re traipsing along a boardwalk over the Gellibrand River as hidden shorebirds cry out from the tall straw-coloured rushes. On the other side, we start climbing again through a maze-like network of coastal scrub when there’s an unexpected break in the foliage. There in the distance, I can make out the Twelve Apostles — like a jagged finish line shrouded in salty spray.