How long does the Great Ocean Walk take to complete?

The full 104km trek from Apollo Bay to Glenample Homestead near the Twelve Apostles usually takes about eight days for walkers carrying their own gear and camping at the hike-in sites along the way. Some fit walkers with a support vehicle do it faster by skipping sections, but eight days is the standard itinerary Parks Victoria and local operators plan around.

Do I need to book campsites on the Great Ocean Walk?

Yes. The hike-in campsites are bookable through the Parks Victoria online booking system, and a camping permit should be purchased well ahead of your walk — sites are limited and a one-night stay per campsite applies unless otherwise approved. Turning up without a booking is not a safe bet on this trail.

Is there drinking water along the track?

Each hike-in campsite has a rainwater tank, but that tank water is untreated, so you need to filter, chemically treat, or boil it before drinking rather than assuming it's safe straight from the tap. Given how exposed and dry much of the clifftop route is, most walkers still carry a decent reserve between camps rather than relying entirely on tank levels.

Which direction should I walk the Great Ocean Walk?

East to west, starting at Apollo Bay and finishing near the Twelve Apostles, is the standard and recommended direction — it's the way the booking system, campsite numbering and most guided itineraries are set up, and it's said to give the better gradient and the more dramatic build toward the coastline's wildest scenery.

Great Ocean Walk: Complete Guide to Victoria's 104km Coastal Trek (Camping, Water & Wildlife)

Most people know the Twelve Apostles from a car park and a viewing platform at the end of a day trip. The Great Ocean Walk is the version of that coastline for people willing to earn the view — a 104km point-to-point trek from Apollo Bay that takes the better part of a week and swaps the tour bus for a hike-in campsite, a headlamp, and a lot of clifftop wind. Opened in 2004 as Victoria’s answer to Tasmania’s Overland Track, it’s built the same way — a chain of hike-in campsites strung along a genuinely wild coastline, rather than a single lookout you drive to. This is not a walk you knock over on a Saturday, and treating it like one is how people end up under-prepared on an exposed, waterless stretch of coast. Here’s what the track actually involves, and what our listing’s “11.22km” distance figure actually means before you plan around it.

Quick stats

Distance: 104km full point-to-point trek, Apollo Bay to Glenample Homestead near the Twelve Apostles. The 11.22km figure in our trail data is a typical single day’s segment on the standard eight-day itinerary, not the whole walk — see below.
Elevation gain: 231 m (per day/segment figure)
Time: ~189 minutes (per day/segment figure — the full trek runs roughly eight days)
Grade: Hard
Route type: Point-to-point
Location: Great Otway National Park, Apollo Bay to the Twelve Apostles, Great Ocean Road, Victoria

What the track is actually like — and what “11km” really means here

Start with the number that trips people up. Our trail database lists this walk at 11.22km with 231m of elevation gain and around 189 minutes of walking time. That’s real data, but it describes a typical single day’s segment on the Great Ocean Walk, not the entire trek. The full walk is 104km, broken into a chain of hike-in campsites, and most people cover it over about eight days, walking somewhere in the range of 10-15km on a given day depending on where the next campsite falls. If you’re planning to walk the whole thing, budget for eight days on the track, not one long afternoon.

The terrain shifts constantly, which is a big part of why this trek has a cult following among Australian bushwalkers. Clifftop sections run through low coastal heath with almost no shade, exposed to whatever wind is coming off the Southern Ocean that day. Drop into a sheltered gully and the track can flip into remnant temperate rainforest, all ferns and filtered light, a genuinely strange contrast given you were staring at open ocean twenty minutes earlier. Then the track drops again onto long beach walks — Aire River, Johanna Beach and Ryans Den are the standout stretches of sand — before climbing back onto cliffs that get progressively wilder and more dramatic as you push west toward the Twelve Apostles.

The centrepiece for most walkers sits roughly a third of the way along: Cape Otway Lightstation, built in 1846-48 and the oldest surviving lighthouse on the Australian mainland. It’s still standing watch over a stretch of coast that was genuinely one of the most dangerous in the country for shipping, and there’s something to reading that history while you’re standing on the same clifftop, gear on your back, having just walked in from Apollo Bay under your own steam. It’s also a legitimate rest and resupply point on the standard itinerary, not just a photo stop.

Underfoot, the track varies as much as the scenery. Expect a mix of formed single-track through heath, some boardwalk sections over the more fragile or boggy ground, rooty forest trail through the rainforest gullies, and firm sand on the beach stretches that can slow you down more than the distance on a map suggests. A few sections along the cliffs and at river mouths are tide-dependent — the kind of place where checking a tide chart before you set off for the day is genuinely part of the planning, not an afterthought. None of this is technical climbing, but “hard” as a grade reflects cumulative distance and exposure over multiple days rather than any single difficult obstacle.

Camping, water and logistics

This is a hike-in trek, and the logistics matter more than they would on a day walk. Along the route are seven hike-in camps — Elliot Ridge, Blanket Bay, Cape Otway, Aire River, Johanna Beach, Ryans Den and Devil’s Kitchen — each with numbered camping pads, a toilet and a rainwater tank. Bookings run through the Parks Victoria online booking system, and you’ll need to buy a camping permit well ahead of your planned dates rather than assume you can rock up and grab a spot; a one-night limit per site generally applies. Sort your permits before you finalise which nights you’re walking, not after.

Water is the detail that catches people out. The tanks at each hike-in campsite hold rainwater that is untreated — it isn’t tested or purified, so the standard practice is to filter, chemically treat, or boil it before drinking rather than trusting it straight from the tap. Combine that with a route that’s largely exposed clifftop heath with very few natural water sources of its own, and most experienced walkers carry a solid reserve between camps and treat everything they collect along the way, rather than gambling on tank levels being full when they arrive. Resupply points for food and water top-ups sit at Apollo Bay, Cape Otway and Princetown — spaced out enough that you’re genuinely carrying several days of supplies between them, not just a day pack.

The standard direction of travel is west-bound: start at Apollo Bay and finish near the Twelve Apostles at Glenample Homestead. This isn’t just a preference — it’s how the booking system and most guided itineraries are structured, and it’s generally considered to give the better gradient while building toward the coastline’s most dramatic scenery rather than walking away from it. Because this is a point-to-point trek rather than a loop, one-way transport is part of the planning — a handful of Great Ocean Road-based operators run shuttle and transfer services connecting hikers back to their vehicle or accommodation at either end, which is worth arranging before you start rather than after you’ve finished and are standing at Glenample with no way back to Apollo Bay.

Conditions along this coastline can change with the weather. Sections of the broader Great Otway National Park do see periodic closures from storm and flood damage — Wye Road, for instance, has had extended closures after storm and flood events — and drive-in campgrounds in the park can also have seasonal closures that don’t necessarily affect the hike-in track itself. None of this is unusual for an exposed coastal park, but it’s exactly why checking current alerts and conditions before you lock in your walking dates is standard practice here, not overcaution.

Food planning follows the same logic as water. With resupply limited to Apollo Bay, Cape Otway and Princetown, most itineraries are built around carrying two to three days of food at a time rather than restocking daily, and factoring the extra pack weight into your daily distance expectations — a loaded multi-day pack on soft sand or a steep gully climb moves a lot slower than the same body on a day walk. Worth noting too that the Otways sit inside Victoria’s fire season risk zone over summer, and exposed heath country like this is exactly the terrain affected by total fire ban days and, in a bad year, park closures — if you’re planning a summer walk, it’s worth checking fire danger ratings for the region in the lead-up, not just the camping bookings.

Wildlife to watch for

Great Otway National Park’s mix of coastal heath, wet forest and cool temperate rainforest supports some genuinely threatened species, not just the usual roadside kangaroos:

Koala — vulnerable. This stretch of the Otways is one of the more reliable places in Victoria to spot koalas in the wild, often low enough in manna gums and blue gums along the track to get a good look without disturbing them.
Powerful owl — vulnerable. Australia’s largest owl species hunts through the forested gullies along the walk; you’re far more likely to hear its deep, low double-hoot at dusk than to see one.
Myrtle Beech — vulnerable. A cool temperate rainforest species that shows up in the sheltered, fern-lined gullies the track drops into between clifftop sections — a good marker that you’ve crossed from exposed heath into genuine rainforest.
Mountain Ash — notable. The tallest flowering plant on earth grows in pockets of the Otways’ wetter forest, and even a non-threatened mention like this is worth knowing before you walk past a genuinely enormous tree without realising what it is.

None of these are animals or plants to expect on demand — the koalas in particular move around with the seasons and the food supply — but their presence is part of what makes the Otways ecologically significant well beyond the coastal scenery most people come for. Walking multiple days through the same forest corridor also gives you a genuinely better chance of spotting something than a single roadside stop ever would — you’re moving slowly, on foot, through the exact gully and heath habitat these species use, at dawn and dusk when a lot of Australian wildlife is most active.

Practical tips

Treat all tank water. Campsite rainwater tanks are untreated — carry a filter, treatment tablets, or the means to boil water, and don’t assume a full-looking tank means safe drinking water.
Book campsites early. Hike-in sites are limited and bookable online through Parks Victoria — lock in your permit before you finalise flights, leave or transport bookings, not after.
Sort your transport before you start. This is a point-to-point trek, not a loop — arrange a shuttle or transfer back to your start point (or to Princetown/Twelve Apostles at the finish) before you set off, since there’s no simple way to double back on foot.
Carry more water than feels necessary. Long clifftop sections have no shade and no natural water source between camps — pack for the exposed stretches, not the sheltered gully sections.
Check current conditions before you commit to dates. This is a storm-exposed coastline and closures do happen from time to time — a quick check of current alerts before finalising your itinerary beats discovering a closed section mid-week.
Pace for eight days, not one big push. The full 104km is genuinely a multi-day undertaking on hard-graded terrain — trying to compress it dramatically raises the risk of running short on daylight, water or energy on the more exposed days.

Nearby

See the full Great Ocean Road & the Otways hikes list for more tracks in the region, or view this walk on the map for the live route.