Farm Stays in Great Ocean Road, VIC

Everyone knows the Great Ocean Road for the Twelve Apostles, but the farmland behind it is the quiet half of the story. From the Otway Ranges west to Port Campbell and Timboon, green dairy country runs right to the clifftops — this is one of Australia's great milk-producing districts, and the cheese, chocolate and whisky makers around Timboon exist because of it. Inland, the Otways add rainforest gullies, waterfalls and tree-fern valleys that feel a hemisphere away from the surf coast twenty minutes over the hill.

A farm stay near the Great Ocean Road turns the world's most famous coastal drive from a rushed day trip into something better. Stay on a dairy or beef property around Timboon, Princetown or the Otway fringe and you can walk the Apostles' clifftops at sunrise and sunset — the hours the tour buses miss — then spend the middle of the day on the Twelve Apostles food trail or under the rainforest canopy at Maits Rest.

The coast is dramatic in every season. Summer brings warm days and swimming at Apollo Bay and Port Campbell's sheltered bay; winter means big Southern Ocean swells, storm light on the cliffs and calving season in the dairy sheds. From Melbourne, allow three hours direct via Colac, or make a full day of it along the coast road through Lorne and Apollo Bay.