Still in pursuit of trees with leaves changing colour to photograph, Stephen suggested that we visit the National Rhododendron Garden at Olinda in the Dandenong Ranges east of Melbourne. He was tipped-off by a post on Parks Victoria’s facebook page.
The Dandenongs are a popular place to visit of a weekend, and with the weather so fine and unseasonably warm on Saturday we weren’t the only ones up there. (I can only imagine it would have been much worse on Sunday, being Mother’s Day!)
The gardens are well sign posted, so easy to find. Fortunately we found a car park once we arrived. The mountain ash around the car park are stunning by themselves, even though (being eucalypts) they don’t change colour.
It’s easy to walk in the entrance (which, unusually for a Victorian Park, is through a gift shop) and get awed by the view and forget to keep walking. Luckily Stephen was there to prompt me to move on. There is a lot more to see.
Even though I’m categorising this (for now at least) as a weekend ‘walk’, I didn’t think of it as a walk, per se – more just a photo opportunity! We followed the main loop track and probably only walked about 2km – give or take. There’s a map on the Parks Victoria page (linked above).
We will have to go back in spring when the Rhododendrons are in flower – that looks beautiful, too.
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