Ocean Grove

Guarding the mouth of the Barwon River, the twin towns of Ocean Grove and Barwon Heads are the principal surfing resorts for the bayside residents of Geelong and their Bellarine Peninsula neighbours.

The towns are just 22km south-east of Geelong and offer everything you need for a relaxing summer holiday - safe surfing beaches, fishing, nature and game reserves, wildlife parks, bush-walking trails, horse-riding and assorted theme parks.

Everything that is, in Ocean Grove's case, except direct access to booze. Among the first land-buyers in Ocean Grove were American Methodist missionaries who made a point of selling on only to owners prepared to swear they would sell no strong drink on the property and Ocean Grove remains publess to this day.

The 143ha Ocean Grove Nature Reserve protects the peninsula"s only substantial remnant of natural bush. The resident she-oak, tea-tree, banksia and wattle stands provide sanctuary for a colony of koalas and the unusual ant blue butterfly. Only discovered last century, the butterfly"s larvae feed exclusively on ants.