The Great Ocean Road trip

“This is the first time I’ve driven since I passed my test,” Matt said casually, as the battered and luridly spray-painted Nissan van wound its way around yet another hairpin corner somewhere between Torquay and Lorne. I gulped, said a silent prayer, then threw myself into the car-wide singalong to Ed Sheeran.

The Great Ocean Road, one of Melbourne’s most popular tourist attractions, was certainly an adventurous first drive. It was certainly an adventurous first Australian road trip. Originally built as the world’s largest war memorial, the road loops along Victoria’s wild and windswept coastline and showcases some of Australia’s best landscapes. In our search for adventure- and Instagram likes- four friends and I escaped for a week in November to explore this coastline, whilst our cohorts back at home battled university deadlines and Britain’s below-freezing temperatures.

They were moments that couldn’t be contained within a smartphone screen. Instead they were captured in a shared moment, and in a forever memory

The road carried us deep into the heart of the Otways forest. It crept under gigantic, deep-green trees that were crowned with the occasional sleeping koala, before hurtling around sharp corners that dropped alarmingly towards the aquamarine ocean. Mountains and forests appeared to trip over each other to tumble into the ocean’s spray. Surfers waving to each other were discernible on the crests of huge waves that crashed into seemingly untouched and wild beaches. The smell of salt mingled with two-dollar hummus filled the van, and I leaned out of the window and snapped yet another photo, feeling the sun coaxing my freckles back out of hiding on my cheeks.

Of course, it wasn’t all entirely like some teen coming-of-age movie. The singalongs and campfire dinners were mixed with too many insect bites, some serious sunburn, and all-too-frequent panics about where to find petrol to fill up the tank. We also had to get seriously creative about how to carry out basic tasks whilst lacking the fundamental amenities with which to do so. How do you cook pasta with only a frying pan at your disposal? Does swimming in a waterfall count as a shower? How do we see to get up the ladder and into the tent when an iPhone flashlight invites the entirety of the local insect population to join us, and on one occasion even a family of intrigued kangaroos?

However, it was moments like this, the unity of four friends badly singing along to a song we all knew and loved, whilst mildly teasing each other’s driving, that were the most precious moments of the trip for me

It was only on the way home, when Melbourne’s familiar skyscrapers began to peek over the horizon and the entire van had begun yet another rousing chorus of ‘Castle on the Hill’, that I realised the true value of a road trip like this. We had checked off all the superficial features of a road trip: we had seen stunning attractions such as the Twelve Apostles and Loch Ard Gorge, excitedly pointed out the Southern Cross winking at us from the Milky Way, and had taken enough photos to fill our friends’ feeds with jealousy for the foreseeable future. However, it was moments like this, the unity of four friends badly singing along to a song we all knew and loved, whilst mildly teasing each other’s driving, that were the most precious moments of the trip for me. They were moments that couldn’t be contained within a smartphone screen. Instead they were captured in a shared moment, and in a forever memory.

The sun began to set. The road drew us ever closer to the city lights and the end of our journey, but the memories I have of that trip have stayed with me even after I had left Australia at the end of my year abroad. Even now, I can’t listen to ‘Castle on the Hill’ without being reminded of the sunshine, the smell of sunscreen, and that battered old van struggling uphill on the Great Ocean Road two summers ago.