Great Otway

Great Otway National Park was created in 2004 by merging the former Otway National Park with several adjoining state parks and reserves, among them Angahook-Lorne, forming a continuous unit of a little over a thousand square kilometres in south-western Victoria. It extends from the coast of the Great Ocean Road inland, across the Otway Ranges.

The orientation of that range towards the moist southerly winds produces one of the highest rainfalls in Victoria, and the result is a dense temperate rainforest dominated by myrtle beech and by tree ferns that form a closed understorey, crossed by streams and waterfalls such as Erskine, Hopetoun and Triplet Falls. In the more open areas grow tall eucalypt forests, and along the coastal strip, coastal heath and dunes.

The park is one of the best places in Australia to see koalas in the wild, above all around Cape Otway, and it is home to wallabies, platypuses in the watercourses, echidnas and an abundant forest birdlife. In some damp gullies, such as Melba Gully, colonies of glow-worms can be watched at night. At the tip of the cape stands the Cape Otway lighthouse, in operation since 1848, the oldest mainland lighthouse in Australia still standing, built to guide the ships entering through the dangerous Bass Strait.