Victoria’s Great Ocean Road is going quiet, and it’s both a blessing and a curse for locals

Throngs of Melburnians swamped the Great Ocean Road this summer, eager to escape the city after months of hard lockdown.

But absent this year are the tour buses brimming with international visitors, mostly from China, that have become increasingly common at Victoria’s most popular tourist destination.

The Great Ocean Road attracts 2.7 million visitors a year, more than Uluru and the Great Barrier Reef combined.

And while the vast majority of visitors are domestic, for the businesses that rely on the thousands of annual bus tours, the year is off to a slow start.

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Tom…