Surf’s up: Visit the seaside town of Barwon Heads
CLOSE TO THE BEACH AND A PROTECTED BIRD HABITAT, NO ONE EVER WANTS TO LEAVE THIS VICTORIAN HOLIDAY TOWN.
THERE ARE A NUMBER of reasons why Barwon Heads is one of Victoria’s favourite holiday destinations. It lies on the southern coast of the Bellarine Peninsula, where the gentle Barwon River estuary meets the wild Bass Strait, just 22 kilometres south-east of Geelong. It brings together all the elements of the classic Aussie beach escape: a shallow and sandy shoreline, a rocky bluff lookout with views across the ocean and back into town along with coastal walking tracks, and a justifiably popular ocean surf break at Thirteenth Beach with a long stretch of sand.
The town also has a swag of restaurants, cafés, bakeries, surf shops and upmarket boutiques, and four top golf courses. There’s fertile farmland to the west and north, plus Lake Connewarre Wildlife Reserve, an expanse of wetland and water bird habitat that buffers Barwon Heads from the rapidly expanding growth corridors of Geelong.
All these things — and more — make Barwon Heads ideal for a holiday and a great place to live. This is, after all, the town that brought the term ‘sea change’ back into everyday parlance after the ABC TV series Seachange was filmed there in the late 1990s. Today, this vibrant community of just under 4000 people enjoys a friendly, relaxed coastal and country environment, with easy access to all the amenities of Geelong, Victoria’s second largest city.
For Annie Orchard, 48, owner of the food, catering and tour business comprising Annie’s Provedore and Produce Store, Annie’s Kitchen (catering) and Annie’s Italy (small group tours to Italy), Barwon Heads has been home to her >
and her two now-adult children Laine, 23, and India, 20, for 15 years. “It’s a fabulous place to bring up children,” says Annie. “You often see the kids riding their bikes with their surfboards attached to the side. There is a real element of freedom here. Barwon Heads has a very active lifestyle. People are always out running, especially in summer. You’ll see people out and about very early in the morning, whether it’s a dad getting a coffee for Mum with a pram and a child who hasn’t gone to sleep, to the local kids that you’ve literally seen grow up from babies and to now teenagers — kids riding their bikes to school, or going down to the local ice-cream shop. It has a wonderful sense of community and that’s what is so lovely about it.”
The Coffettis — Jessie, 31, Otto, 40, and their two children, daughter Charlie, four, and two-year-old son Leo — are just one of the many young families who have made Barwon Heads a home in recent years. The couple, who moved from further down the Surf Coast two years ago, own Barwon Heads’ popular Coffetti Gelato, an authentic Italian handmade ice-cream and gelato bar in the heart of town. For them, Barwon Heads is an ideal place to live as it allows them to balance family life with operating their business. “It’s extremely easy for a family to live here,” says Jessie. “Especially before dinnertime, when you’ve got that hour to kill and you can walk down to the river, and the kids can swim, there’s the park, or we take a picnic down to the beach. You just live outdoors all the time, so the kids are happy. There’s a really good community, and there are a lot of new families here.
“Working in town is quite different to living in it, and since we opened our coffee shop a lot of mums have met there,” she says. “The kindergarten is so lovely and I’ve met so many people through that, then after that the kids will all go off to the primary school together.” >
For more information about Barwon Heads, go to visitgeelongbellarine.com.au