Apollo Bay

The Otway coast is the country of the Gadubanud people, who lived between the rainforest and the sea and whose name for this place was Krambruk. Sealers and whalers worked the coast from the early 19th century, and the bay was named after the Apollo, the vessel Captain Loutit sheltered here from a storm in 1845; the township was called Middleton and then Krambruk before it became Apollo Bay in 1898.

The town that grew on the beach lived on two industries. Timber-getters cut the great eucalypt forests behind it from the 1850s, hauling logs to jetties and later to narrow-gauge tramways, and a narrow-gauge railway from Colac reached Beech Forest in 1902 and Crowes beyond it, carrying timber and potatoes until it closed in 1962. At the same time a fishing fleet built up in the bay, working crayfish, abalone and scale fish, and a harbour was constructed to shelter it. Until well into the 20th century the sea and a rough inland track were the only ways in.

The Great Ocean Road changed that. Cut into the cliffs between 1919 and 1932 by returned servicemen as a memorial to those killed in the First World War, it linked the coastal settlements to Geelong and brought holidaymakers, first by the busload and then by car. Sawmilling faded through the later 20th century and native-forest logging in the Otways has since been wound back, and the reserves behind the town were brought together as the Great Otway National Park in 2005. Tourism, fishing and farming now carry the town, and the Great Ocean Walk, opened in 2006, starts on its foreshore.

Apollo Bay keeps the mixed character of a working fishing port and a holiday town. Boats still go out from the harbour, the surf life-saving club patrols the beach through summer, and the football and netball club is a fixture of winter weekends, while the population multiplies in January and empties again by February. Residents talk about the seasons in terms of visitors as much as weather.

The hinterland has drawn artists, growers and people after a quieter life since the 1970s, and the town has galleries, craft stalls at the weekend market and festivals of its own, among them WordFest and the winter event Winter Wild. The Great Ocean Walk brought a walking culture with it, and the long-distance runners' festival along the coast in late autumn is now part of the calendar too.

Conservation shapes local identity. The end of native-forest logging and the creation of the national park were argued over for years, and the forests, waterfalls and wildlife are now the town's livelihood as well as its backdrop. Koalas, seals and glow-worms are treated as assets to be looked after rather than displayed. Gadubanud connection to the country is acknowledged in place names and park interpretation, and the coastal middens and the forest are understood locally as a cultural landscape as much as a scenic one.

About 1,800 people live in Apollo Bay, and several times that number are in town on a hot weekend in January. It belongs to the Colac Otway Shire, and the administrative centre, the hospital and the larger supermarkets are at Colac, about 70 kilometres inland over the ranges. The town has a primary and secondary college, a small medical clinic and an ambulance and fire brigade largely staffed by volunteers.

Work is tourism, hospitality, fishing, building and farming. Beef and dairy cattle graze the cleared hills behind the coast, the fleet lands lobster and fish, and accommodation, cafés and tours employ most of the rest, much of it seasonally. A large share of houses are holiday homes or short-stay rentals, which has pushed prices well beyond local wages and made housing for workers a constant difficulty.

Daily life is quiet and weather-driven. Winter is a small-town routine of school, sport and the pub, with tradespeople working on empty holiday houses; summer is long days of full car parks, queues at the bakery and a foreshore covered in tents. Bushfire preparation is an annual discipline, storms and landslips occasionally close the road in both directions and cut the town off, and mobile and internet coverage remain a live local complaint.

Seafood is the point. The fleet works southern rock lobster, known here as crayfish, along with abalone, flathead, whiting and squid, and the co-operative at the harbour sells it within hours of landing. Fish and chips eaten on the foreshore is the town's standard meal, and restaurants on the main street put whatever the boats have brought in on the board.

Around it is the produce of the Otways. The high rainfall behind the coast suits dairying, and the region's milk, cheese and ice cream are sold in the town; berries, apples and potatoes come from the hills; and beef is raised on the cleared ridges. The weekend foreshore market brings growers, bakers and cheese makers together, and the bakeries do a steady trade in meat pies and pastries with drivers on the coast road.

Otherwise the food is that of a small Australian coastal town, done reasonably well because the visitor season demands it — pub counter meals of steak, parma and schnitzel, pizza, burgers, a brewery on the main street, ice cream on the foreshore, and cafés serving flat whites, long blacks and brunch dishes from mid-morning. Victorian wines from the Otway hinterland and further afield fill the wine lists, and cool-climate pinot noir and chardonnay from the state's south suit the local fish.