News and stories from our iconic coast
The Great Ocean Road Coast Committee is honoured to win a Victorian Coastal Award for our education program with the Honourable Lily D’Ambrosio MP. A huge congratulations to Peter Crowcroft, Hilary Bouma, Katie Hart and all of the Great Ocean Road Coast staff involved. Special thanks to all the of students, caravan park campers, volunteers, businesses, teachers, parents and all the other coastal education supporters.
Read more
The Bert Alsop Track is a scenic walking track along the Lorne foreshore, linking North Lorne to the town’s centre and offering views across Louttit Bay and is a popular route for cyclists, walkers, and joggers.
Over the past 6 months the Great Ocean Road Coast Committee’s conservation team has been busy with the woody weed removal that started with the Green Army program in 2016, and the end of 2017 saw all of the woody weeds from the start of the track to the ‘Fat Ladies’ car park removed. This was done with the generous help of a Ford corporate group, LorneCare volunteers, and Great Ocean Road Coast’s conservation and foreshore teams.
The Great Ocean Road Coast Committee has had a busy start to the year with 560 students participating in its environmental education program along the coast. Students from kindergarten to senior secondary school have contributed over 90 hours of conservation work, making a huge impact along our precious coast.
Great Ocean Road Coast Education Program Coordinator Peter Crowcroft, also known as Possum Pete, said that it was exciting to see so many students getting involved and learning about the coastal environment. Read more
Works are well underway for the brand new Anglesea boardwalk at Demons Bluff. Coursing over the unique Anglesea heathland, the boardwalk will make up a 180m section of the 44km Surf Coast Walk, which stretches from Fairhaven to Point Impossible.
Following an engineer’s report, which revealed that cracks in the side of the cliff represented a risk to visitors, the track was re-routed in the interests of visitor safety. The boardwalk will jointly protect the fragile heathland, as well as enhance the visitor experience.
A group of year 9 students from Northern Bay College have been doing some fantastic environmental work throughout term one with Great Ocean Road Coast Committee’s Coast Guardians program.
The year 9 students have been working closely with Great Ocean Road Coast’s Hilary Bouma, Education Coordinator of the Coast Guardians program, doing a variety of activities in their adopted area of Spring Creek, Torquay.
Have you seen this weed? That’s what Jan Juc Coast Action volunteers and the Great Ocean Road Coast Committee staff are asking the public as they up the ante to eliminate the highly invasive South African weed Gazania from the Jan Juc cliffs, other public spaces and hopefully people’s gardens. Read more
Each year the Great Ocean Road Coast Committee receives multiple reports of illegal activities, with staff regularly discovering evidence of poor behaviour on the coast, particularly during peak season. This summer has been no different with a recent spate of illegal behaviour on coastal reserves along the Surf Coast.
Multiple coastal sites in Torquay, Lorne, and Anglesea have been impacted by people lighting fires, littering and destroying vegetation. Party sites are particularly destructive to native vegetation, as trees are cut for firewood and rubbish is often left behind, not to mention the damage made to the stability of fragile dune systems.
