Dandenong Ranges

…

0 ’tis easeful here to lie 
Hidden from Noon’s scorching eye, 
In this grassy cool recess 
Musing thus of Quietness. 

–  excerpt from “A Midsummer Noon in the Australian Forest” – Charles Harper

Very much a stick a pin in the map and see where it takes us sort of day.  I set the Sat Nav to go to the Dandenong Ranges National Park which, after a small amount of research, seemed like a nice place to go and it looked like there were nice things to see and do.  Keith stayed at home for his three day post meal sleep, we bagged up some supplies and set off following “Sheila’s” advice.  We’ve named the Sat Nav “Sheila” whilst we’re here as it seems appropriate for the location; in England it’s called Susan as we get constantly told what to do and where to go and we must obey!!

Now, the problem with telling Sheila to take us to a generic destination which covers a huge amount of forested mountain rather than a specific, named, location is that Sheila aims to take you to the dead centre of all the possible options on the map.  After driving up and down a few roads twice and down and up mountain-side residential side roads barely fit for two-wheel drive vehicles we realised that Sheila was trying to get us to the actual dead centre of the Dandenong Ranges NP whether there was a road there or not so we had to make a human decision and followed good old fashioned road signs to “Sky High Mount Dandenong” which turned out to be a fantastic viewing platform at the top of a mountain, sitting above the trees and looking down towards Melbourne and Port Philip Bay.  Although it was a bit hazy and the pictures don’t do it anywhere near enough justice, the view is awesome.  There’re also some nice walks around the central area with gardens, fountains, streams, statues, carvings and picnic areas.

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We planned the route slightly better after that and chose to go to a place called Sherbrooke Falls.  There’s a short walk from the bbq/picnic site car park area to the falls through a Jurassic-esque forest of ancient Tree Ferns and the biggest Eucalyptus trees we’ve seen.  If it weren’t for the marked trail the forest would be impassable as it seems pristine, untouched by humanity in any sort of unnatural manipulated way.  Again, my pictures don’t do it justice – I must practice focus and lighting more.

The falls themselves were somewhat underwhelming but that may be because of the severe lack of rainfall recently, we can only imagine how they might look during flood conditions.  The walk to and from the bridge over the falls was nice.

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Back in the car we headed to the coast in as direct a route as we could and ended up at St Kilda.  We drove half of the Melbourne F1 Grand Prix circuit, with “The Chain” at 11,  from the Ascari bend through Hill, Waite, Fittipaldi, Clarke, Lauda and Marina all along Lakeside Drive, exited and parked up by the Station Pier with the ferry to Tasmania docked – almost stowed away for another adventure but settled for a walk along the beach to find some jellyfish and shells along another wide, clean, soft sandy beach…  we’re going for more beaches along this coast next week…

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