The Dandenong Ranges is an area just east of Melbourne, made up of low mountain ranges and rolling countryside. It's very picturesque and at this time of year (Spring) quite green.
I had a couple of days leave booked during the school holidays and had originally planned to go further to the Mornington Peninsula, but someone at work recommended that the Dandenong's which, as well as being a couple of hours closer to Canberra probably had more on offer for the kids.
Nevertheless it was still a fair drive. We headed down the highway and after a long lunch and meander in Albury as well as a couple of other toilet breaks we reached our destination mid-afternoon after probably around 9 or 10 hours in the car. The kids were excellent passengers and we variously listened to audio books or chatted.
Our first couple of nights were spent in a slightly dodgy motel in Belgrave. It was clean, but fairly ancient. The kids laughed at the TV - Audrey remarking that the tele was older than her (which in truth it probably was).
On our first full morning, we caught the famed 'Puffing Billy' steam train from Belgrave through to our destination (Lakeside). Lakeside boasts a (huge) model train exhibition which was situated in a nearby shed/warehouse building near to the (full size) Puffing Billy station. The model train has apparently been there for 30 years. The owners were fastidious in their attention to detail and the model had everything from airports to hot air balloons. The kids loved the eye-spy they'd set up and delighted in spotting things.
We returned to Belgrave by the Puffing Billy and then rushed to Healsville, a sanctuary focusing on Austalian fauna. Incredibly the place was free for kids during the holidays. Often parks like this are fairly mediocre - a few moth-eared koalas and bored kangaroos, but Healsville was wonderfully set up with great enclosures and loads to see and do. I wish we'd actually given it a lot longer than the short afternoon we did.
The next day we headed to Trees Adventure park, a park which offers a series of obstacles/zip lines traversing the trunks and branches across quite a large area of woodland. Visitors are given a harness and instruction and then essentially set-loose to choose their own route and challenge. Everything was colour coded to cater for under 7s right up to adults.
The kids took to it immediately. They were both more flexible (and probably stronger) than me and certainly less worried about the prospect of crashing through the canopy en route to the floor. We were allotted two hours, but in truth I think we probably stayed four.
Afterwards we left Dandenong and drove to the coast - stopping first in a lovely (almost isolated) spot called Golden Beach where we stayed in a beach hut - a lovely family hosted us (they stayed next door) and then from there drove another four hours or so to Marlo (again a beautiful and very relaxed spot) where we stayed in a spacious motel and feasted on local fish and chips.
Eventually we headed for home. A straight drive north through Cooma. We covered 1600km in five days so it was quite a trip, but really good fun and nice to explore a bit of a different part of the world.
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| On board the Puffing Billy |
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| The HUGE model village at Lakeside |
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| Treetop Adventures |
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| Audrey flicking her hair in the sea at Marlo! |
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| The sun sets in Marlo (a pelican perched on a telegraph pole) |
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