Dandenong Ranges and Puffing Billy

The Dandenong Ranges lie about 35km east of Melbourne's CBD, reachable in 50-60 minutes by car via the Burwood Highway or roughly one hour 15 minutes by Metro train on the Belgrave line direct from Flinders Street to Belgrave station, making this one of the easiest day trips from the city centre to reach without a car. The ranges are a cool-climate mountain forest of fern gullies and mountain ash, home to the historic Puffing Billy heritage steam railway, which runs from Belgrave through the forest to Lakeside and on to Gembrook, the National Rhododendron Garden at Olinda, the 1000 Steps Kokoda Track Memorial Walk, and the William Ricketts Sanctuary sculpture garden set among tree ferns. A typical itinerary begins with the morning train to Belgrave, followed by a mid-morning ride on Puffing Billy to Lakeside and back, a return trip of about two hours through fern gullies and over the well-known Trestle Bridge. Lunch is easiest in Belgrave village itself, which has cafes clustered around the station, before an afternoon spent either tackling the steep, uneven 1000 Steps walk through mountain ash forest or taking the gentler option of strolling the National Rhododendron Garden at Olinda. The ranges are worth visiting year-round, but autumn brings the strongest garden colour at the National Rhododendron Garden, and dawn or dusk visits to Sherbrooke Forest give the best chance of hearing the superb lyrebird's mimicry. Food and rest stops are concentrated in the hill villages of Belgrave, Sassafras, and Olinda, which have cafes, bakeries, and tearooms such as Miss Marple's Tearoom in Sassafras.