The Road Before
HomeThe history of the GOR can be conceived as consisting of three temporal layers: pre-colonisation; post-colonisation, and before and after the construction of the road.
A deep-timeline places those histories in the context of Australia’s geological history since its separation from Antarctica.
1918 to the present:
(the period from the creation of the ‘the worlds longest war memorial’ as a post-war employment project).
1788 to 1918:
Post colonisation
25 – 50,000 years
before white settlement:
The Wudawurrung and Gadubanud lands
-
30,000,000 years ago
Australia separated from Antarctica.
72,000 years ago
The ancestors of modern aboriginals left Africa.
(Contested as to whether it was a single group.)
A Deep-Time History of the GOR.
from Dr. David Turnbull
-
65,000 years ago
Madjedbebe Northen Arnhemland.
Possible earliest evidence of human arrival.
50,000 years ago
Currently accepted date of first human arrival in Sahul (PNG) and Australia combined.
-
47,000 years ago
Warratyi Rock Shelter Northern Flinders Ranges. Earliest evidence of humans living with megafuana – bones of diprotodon and giant bird (genyornis?) extinct by around 45-50,000 years ago.
45,000 years ago
Plausible date for aboriginal arrival in Victoria.
-
40,000 years ago
Stone tools on the banks of Jordan river near Hobart, Tasmania.
31,000 years ago
Most Aboriginal communities were genetically isolated from each other, giving rise to great genetic diversity.
Hearth and megafauna remains at Murrup Tamboore, Keilor Victoria
-
30-20,000 years ago
Last ice age, glacial maximum
20,000 years ago
Climate got colder and dryer Lake Mungo dried up.
-
11,000 years ago
Tasmania separated as land bridges flooded and Port Philip bay formed
8,000 years ago
New Guinea and Australia separated by sea level rise and current climate established.
-
7,000 years ago
Last volcanic activity in Victoria but occurring previously every 25,000 years or so.
1600 – 1650
Dutch explorers discover New Holland – Australia.
-
1788
Colonisation – First Penal Settlement NSW.
1837 – 1940
650 ships wrecked (approx.) along the GOR coast.
-
1848
Cape Otway Lighthouse opened.
1855
Self Government Victoria.
-
1891
Aireys Inlet Lighthouse opened.
1918 (September)
Building the road; First surveys commence.
1912 – 1920
Great Ocean Road construction.
1918 to now.
On the 24th August 2019 the ABC joined the celebrations of 100 years since the creation of the Great Ocean Road, with Nicole Mills writing:
“As weary soldiers returned from WWI, many swapped their guns for shovels and began work on Victoria’s Great Ocean Road. But 100 years on, this engineering feat is under pressure from the relentless battering of the Southern Ocean and a booming tourism industry.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-24/100-years-of-the-great-ocean-road/10968026?nw=0
That celebration of 100 years since picks and shovels carved the path of the current road has provided a rich historical documentation of the early years of its construction and the lives of the more than 3000 returned soldiers who commenced work on September 19, 1919. It took more than 13 years to complete the coastal link between Lorne and Apollo Bay.
Historical societies in towns along the road saw the 100-year anniversary as a reason for improving local documentation, refreshing existing catalogues and expanding collections with oral histories, photos, exhibitions. A new documentary The Story of The Road was commissioned by Great Ocean Road Regional Tourism; it was completed in time for screenings along the road from Torquay to Apollo Bay, in September 2019, in existing cinemas and pop-up shipping container ‘theatres’ in outdoor tourist settings. The documentary focuses on lives of those servicemen who picked up shovels, climbed precarious cliffs, rekindled comradeship, set up tent-camps, lived (some with families) – and died – for what they saw as valuable employment and the construction of a great tribute to comrades lost in foreign fields.
The names of the majority of those who worked on the road are lost.
In 1918 the newly formed Great Ocean Road Trust dreamed of the economic boost that would come from linking up coastal fishing and agricultural settlements. Their vision was to emulate other great ocean routes such as those of Mediterranean France and south-western England; their dreams of the seaside playgrounds that would be opened to the citizens of Melbourne shaped the early advertising posters for Lorne and Apollo Bay.
In 1936 a submarine telegraph and telephone cable from Apollo Bay to Stanley provided the first telephone connection to Tasmania from the mainland. The Apollo Bay Telegraph station closed in 1963 and is now a museum
Media attention to the centenary of the road was not universally nostalgic; the prospect of increasing tourism seemed to much of the local media as running counter to evidence of ‘over-visitation’. A special series on the road in The Age newspaper had their reporter travelling the coastline on his motorcycle and finding ‘pretty quickly, that this is a road so popular it is in the process of being loved to death.’
The 100-year celebration of the creation of the road was planned as a tourism boost. Soon after the September 2019 launch, Australia was enveloped by one of its worst fire events; although that did not touch this region the international media attention triggered a rapid fall in international tourist arrivals. By early in 2020 it was Covid 19 that brought Great Ocean Road tourism to the point of collapse.
The Great Ocean (Road) before the road.
The domain of the Great Ocean Road (as it is today) was not uninhabited before 2018. The area is called the shipwreck coast due to the number of ships visiting the colony that did not make it. Some of the sites of habitation toady owe their existence to the retrieval of cargo from shipwrecks. As the coast was surveyed around 1846, settlers moved in to cut timber, set up fishing and whaling and eventually agriculture, with the telegraph arriving and towns surveyed in the 1860-70’s. Lighthouses were constructed; that encompasses a complex history of construction, light technologies, governance and standards, summarised in Chapter 2 of the 1997 ‘Conservation Analysis for the Split Point Lightstation’ by Alan Lovell and Associates (see links).
Tracks from the inland farming towns were established to the costal settlements were established to inland farming towns but until the late 1890’s most transport was by sea.
Apollo Bay opened a post office in 1873 with a school in 1880. Lorne opened its post office in 1874; Port Campbell Post Office opened on 19 March 1874.
The major towns strung out along the road have well established history organisations with on-line information and museums and displays (in Aireys in a bark clad hut from 1862 which survived only to be burnt down and rebuilt after the Ash Wednesday fires of 1983)
Back 50,000 years (or more?)
The timeline sets our contemplation of the Great Ocean Road in the geological history of the earth and the movement of human species. One aspect stands out – the apparently resilient inhabitation of Australia and the GOR region over some of the country’s most significant and dramatic events: the last Ice Age; the separation of Australia from Tasmania; the separation of Australia from New Guinea; the era of recurring active volcanos activity in Victoria. It is in this spirit that Billy Griffiths introduces his book, Deep Time Dreaming, in this way:
“Australia’s human history began over 60,000 years ago. The continent was discovered by a group of voyagers who travelled across a vast passage of water to a land where no hominid had roamed before. Over millennia, they explored and colonised every region, transforming the terrain as they moved, making the country their own through language, song and story. They harnessed flame to create new ecosystems, dug the earth to encourage crops and built water controls to extend the natural range of their resources. They thrived in the extreme aridity of the central deserts and hunted in the glacier filled gorges spreading from the Tasmanian ice cap. They enjoyed times of regional abundance, endured great droughts and adapted to millennia-long floods that saw sea levels rise about 125 metres. They watched territories disappear, lakes dry, volcanoes erupt, dunefields form and species come and go. Theirs is a remarkable story of transformation and resilience.” [page 1].
(Note: The Academic references section of this site includes books and papers and other documentation of the fist nations of Australia.)
The GOR region has been home to the Gadubanud people (Eastern Maar Aboriginal Corporation) and Wadawurrung people (Wadawurrung Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation ) for at least 35,000 years.
Wadawurrung People are determined to see their unique cultural heritage protected and respected. Wadawurrung aims to restore Traditional knowledge and authority over the management of Wadawurrung Country for the betterment of those living on, prospering from and/or simply enjoying its land, waterways and coastal areas.
The Eastern Maar are Traditional Owners of south-western Victoria. Our land extends as far north as Ararat and encompasses the Warrnambool, Port Fairy and Great Ocean Road areas. It also stretches 100m out to sea from low tide and therefore includes the iconic Twelve Apostles.“Eastern Maar” is a name adopted by the people who identify as Maar, Eastern Gunditjmara, Tjap Wurrung, Peek Whurrong, Kirrae Whurrung, Kuurn Kopan Noot and/or Yarro waetch (Tooram Tribe) amongst others Eastern.