Melba Gully

Just past Cape Otway on the Great Ocean Road lies Melba Gully, a small surviving remnant of dense rainforest in the Great Otway National Park. During the day this is a perfect setting for picnics and bushwalks among ancient mossy trees and giant tree ferns.

Madsens Track
An easy walk along Madsens Track, the park’s main walking trail, reveals all its beauty. This 40-minute loop walk takes you through the original forest, following the Johanna River and passing the Big Tree, a 300-year-old Otway messmate with a massive girth of 27 metres, a reminder of the giant trees that once covered the Otway Ranges. 

Glow worms
Visit Melba Gully after dark to experience the unique spectacle provided by the large colony of glow worms living in the banks beside the walking tracks.

The name is misleading, as they are not worms but the larvae of a fly-like insect called the fungus gnat. During the 9-month larval stage, they live in damp, dark places throughout the Otways, such as the soil banks and overhanging ledges along the walking tracks in Melba Gully. The light is emitted from tiny tubes visible through transparent skin at the base of the abdomen. From within crevices in the banks, they produce silken threads with sticky beads or droplets. Small insects attracted to the luminous glow are caught in these silk traps and reeled in, just like fish on the end of a line.

Hundreds of tiny pinpricks of light gleaming and twinkling in the dark forest make for a magical effect. You’ll need a torch, but avoid shining it directly at the glow worms, as they ‘turn out the lights’ when disturbed. From the picnic ground car park it is only a short walk along a well-graded gravel track, with guide rails beside the best viewing areas. Alternatively, join an informative guided tour run just after dusk every night of the year.

The glow worms can be seen in all sorts of weather and in wet weather you may also see the rare Otways black-snail, a carnivorous species with a glossy black shell, found only in the Otways.

The area around Melba Gully was logged in the early days of settlement before becoming a popular picnic lunch spot for bus tourists in the 1930s. Offered by its owners to the Victorian Conservation Trust in 1975, it is now a state park managed to protect the important and fragile rainforest ecosystem.

How to get there
Turn off the Great Ocean Road 3 kilometres west of Lavers Hill. Car park is 2 kilometres further.