Apollo Bay is located three hour’s drive west of Melbourne on the Great Ocean Road. The site for this studio is currently used as a nine-hole golf course and incorporates an active harbour with associated structures related primarily to fishing, boating and other recreational activities. The harbour also supports an active commercial fishing industry. The overall site’s size is approximately 16 hectares, including the current golf course, foreshore and dunes, beaches, pier, and rock breakwater. There is also an approximately 400-meter-long rock platform and associated beach along the outermost shoreline. The golf course landscape is dominated by slightly undulating topography dominated by lawn and large existing trees. The Braham River, which runs adjacent to the site between Apollo Bay and the associated settlement of Marengo to the west, originates from areas inland that are home to spectacular temperate rainforests.
Apollo Bay was established in the mid-1800s with an economy based initially on whaling, sealing and timber harvesting. Few historical buildings remain, partially due to a devastating bushfire in 1857 and subsequent redevelopment. As is the case with other Great Ocean Road towns, approximately half the town’s dwellings are left unoccupied for much of the year; however, large numbers of tourists and temporary residents visit it during certain times, particularly summer months. While fishing is still a viable economic activity for the town, tourism is vital to the local economy. More tourism-related development is seen as one way of sustaining this “growth area” town’s future growth. The focus of this studio is on using eco-tourism as a way to do this more sustainably.
The studio’s coastal site possesses high ecological, aesthetic, and cultural value and as such can inspire the creation of master plans and detailed designs for a complex of ecotourism facilities that will be both attractive to eco-sensitive tourists as well as be optimally environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable. This requires students to first explore this spectacular coastal foreshore landscape through an in-depth site analysis identifying its significant environmental and social/cultural attributes that can offer opportunities for eco-tourism development. This is followed by them preparing a master plan that suggests ways to redevelop the area to support eco-tourism-related activities that can be optimally integrated with the local community and natural environment. Students then must prepare detailed designs proposals for two areas within their master plans.