There’s no charge to visit Loch Ard Gorge. Most travelers come for a quick photo stop or to walk one of three short, easy walking routes: the Shipwreck Walk, the Geology Walk, or the Living on the Edge bird walk. Mutton Island, near the beach, houses a colony of short-tailed shearwater seabirds in spring and summer, when it’s possible to watch thousands of them flying home at dusk to feed their hungry chicks.
Many Great Ocean Road tours and Melbourne–Adelaide overland journeys stop at Loch Ard Gorge. For a less busy experience, consider joining a reverse itinerary Great Ocean Road day tour, which visits the area in the morning rather than the afternoon; a sunset tour; or a multi-day tour with a stopover in Port Campbell.
Loch Ard Gorge sits within Port Campbell National Park just off the Great Ocean Road, about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) from the Twelve Apostles. It’s about a 4.5-hour drive along the Great Ocean Road from Melbourne, but it sits just 5 miles (8 kilometers) east of Port Campbell, which is a great place to spend the night. There’s no public transit so you’ll want to rent a vehicle or join a tour.
Loch Ard Gorge is open all year round, but is popular with day trippers from Melbourne on summer afternoons, especially during the weekends. Stay in Port Campbell and visit at dusk between October and April to watch Mutton Island’s flocks of birds flying home to roost—or swing by in the morning for a quieter experience.
The stretch of coast between Victoria’s Cape Otway and Port Fairy is known as the Shipwreck Coast because over 700 ships met their end on its savage cliffs. The Loch Ard wreck in 1878 captured 19th-century imaginations when just two seafarers survived after the ship hit Mutton Island—Tom Pearce and Eva Carmichael. The English-speaking world hoped the teenage pair would marry. They did not.
