Located on Victoria's southern coastline and close to Jan Juc and Bells Beaches, Torquay is the stepping off point for a number of great beach locations along the Great Ocean Road. The Great Ocean Road starts in Torquay and continues west to Warrnambool following the rugged coastline with its famous surfing beaches and startling rock formations that have been carved and weathered from the limestone cliffs.
The Great Ocean Road region also encompasses the city of Geelong and the Bellarine Peninsula with its sandy bays. The closest city to Torquay is Anglesea which is 17 kilometres away. The population of Torquay is just under 7,000 but increases during the summer and during the Bells Beach Surfing competitions. The closest airport is at Avalon just 35 kilometres away. Flights come and go from Avalon from all major Australian destinations.
Torquay is 97 kilometres south west of Melbourne and 21 kilometres south of Geelong, Victoria's second largest city. It is the home of the iconic surf brands Quicksilver, Piping Hot and Rip Curl and there are huge outlets at Surf City Plaza. The shopping here is biased towards all things surfing.
Torquay is the town closest to Bells Beach, a world class surfing beach and possibly the most well known Australian beach for surf. This is a non-patrolled beach and does not have surf life saving club to monitor the conditions. Better swimming beaches are at Torquay and Jan Juc.
The beach faces south east as does Bells and is 800 metres long, more than twice the length of Bells. It extends from Point Danger to Rocky Point, which sees the start of Jan Juc. There are large rock reefs at the Point Danger end and Spring Creek runs out to see part way down the beach.
The waves here average 1.2 metres with a single sand bar that can be cut by up to 3 rips. Like Jan Juc there are permanent rips at each rocky end. The rip to the south is called the Escalator and is very strong when conditions are from the east.
The beach here is quite steep and is backed by its sealed parking areas for 300 cars. The beach is moderately hazardous at 6 due to rips, wind, underwater rocks and sharks as in all southern beaches.
The beach is on ferry, train and bus timetables and there are toilets and showers, barbecue and cooking facilities, picnic shelters and phones and food nearby.
Torquay is the town that services the surfing area of Bella Beach and Jan Juc with major supermarkets, schools, sporting teams and lots of accommodation. The end of the year sees Torquay full of school leavers celebrating the end of their education before moving onto college and university.
A lot of the area around Torquay was farming land but it is now mainly a residential area and popular with families looking to live close to all services but enjoying a beach lifestyle.
Torquay also has fishing clubs, Yachting clubs and golf clubs.