The Dandenongs

Lucy's uncle, Mike Clarke, met us at Melbourne airport and whisked us off to dinner in the city before heading out to the outskirts of the city. We had our first taste of kangaroo fillet - which is surprisingly similar to ostrich fillet in taste and texture.

Mike, Geoff and Lucy enjoying Kangaroo Steak

The Dandenong mountain range lies 45minutes drive east of the city of Melbourne and is an area of (mostly) protected indigenous forest including massive Mountain Ash trees (a Eucalypt) with an understory of, among other things, a couple species of Tree Fern.  We are both super keen on plants - Geoff on trees and Lucy on everything else!  The Mountain Ash is the tallest flowering tree in the world and some of the trees that we saw are vying with General Sherman ( the tallest redwood - not a flowering tree - which grows in California at ~111m) for the title of tallest living organism on earth.  The range was formed by an ancient cauldron volcano and its lava flows, which, after about 300 million years, have broken down to form the rich soils that support the forest.  Initially the Dandenlongs were the summer hunting ground of the Wurundjeri tribe of aborigines and it was named "Corrhanwarrabul' meaning 'beautiful place where the birds sang, kangaroos jumped and lyrebirds performed.'  The white man arrived in the 1830's and pretty soon began aggressively logging the timber of the 100m+ trees for ship building and construction.  Most of the trees we were to see were 2nd or 3rd generation and even so some of them have almost reached the 100m mark!

The Mighty Mountain Ash with Tree Ferns making up the understory, it is difficult to comprehend the scale of these trees in photographs

We were based in the little village of Olinda and stayed in a lovely guest house from where we explored the area.  First up was the National Rhododendron Garden.  Although we were too early for the mass displays of Rhododendrons and Azaleas, the Camellias were all out and some of the first of the rhodies.  One thing we've noticed is that Australians like to display specimen trees - both their own and foreign trees, and we both really enjoyed the beautiful trees on show.  It was exciting for us to see our first of the Australian birds in their weird and wonderful shapes and colours.  

Tree Ferns make the most beautiful patterns.

The cute Eastern Yellow Robin

Rhododendrons really are impressive flowers

Hmm...de ja vu... looks like that picture in Wisley Gardens in England... Daffodils and temperatures below 10 degrees....

After some really great Aussie meat pies for lunch, we headed down to Sherbrooke Forest for a walk under the famous Mountain Ash's.  At the parking lot there is a 'wild' bird feeding station where, for a small fee, you can get a bowl of bird seed and feed the cockatoos and rosellas.  The cockatoos were much heavier than we expected and relatively hard work to hold up when 3 of them perched squabbling on your arm!  

Geoff with a Sulphur Crested Cockatoo

Three Cockatoos get mighty heavy!!

The Crimson Rosella's really loved Geoff's hair!

Hello! Their crests were beautiful!

We escaped the squawking, squabbling, and asian-photo-taking mass and headed off into the quiet of the forest. It was surreal to see such beautiful tall trees with their silver trunks and the lush green of the tree ferns below.  Up close, most of the tree ferns are pretty tall in their own right with many being over 4 meters tall.  

We have also been amazed how these forests full of beautiful, established forest comprise mostly of the trees and plants that we are trying so hard to eradicate in South Africa. It is surreal to see black wattle, myrtle, gum trees and port jackson looking so happy and glamourous in their natural surrounds!

Lovely forest walking

A rare Slender Tree Fern - one of the tallest we saw which we guessed stood at 8m!

Suddenly the forest was filled with bird song from a number of birds all calling at the same time.  The sound seemed to be coming from somewhere up ahead so we crept on until the calls came from both sides of the path.  At this point we recalled hearing about the lyrebird and how they mimic different sounds in the forest, and after now looking for a single large bird near the ground, we finally caught sight of on of him before he hopped off the log he was standing on and disappeared into the ferny undergrowth.  Super excited about our lyrebird sighting (glimpse!), we walked on and were soon rewarded by seeing a male walk across the path just in front of us.  Lyrebirds are relatively dull coloured in browny grey and are about the size of a khoraan with a long stocky tail.  In the mature males this plain tail transforms into a mass of long white feathers almost like skinny ostrich feathers and with the two end feathers thick and richly marked in rust and black.  During mating displays the males hold these feathers in a fan vertically or flat over their heads as they shake the whole fan and sing for the females, trying to impress them into mating.  By the end of our walk we'd seen a total of 6 birds (apparently quite rare) and Geoff had encountered the famous black leeches that fall from the trees and ferns.  The heavens had also opened us about 40 mins from the end of our walk, and despite having rain boots and jackets with us, two very sodden South Africans could be seen stripping off to get into their car!

A male Lyrebird displaying his tail - photo from Google

We wrapped the day off with a fantastic dinner at the SkyHigh Restaurant although the cloud was down and we didn't have much view :(

Complementary transport to the SkyHigh Resturant!