Flat and brown. Flat and brown. Flat and brown. Ocean.
That's a rather crude but very apt description of the Melbourne summer landscape, according to my wife. It's flat, it's hot, it's burnt yellow and brown, and then you reach the sea. It can be quite frankly, a bit dull. Which is why Melbourne's self proclaimed Hills Villages are like a breath of fresh air. And fine, fresh, English country air at that.
It's hilly, it's cool, it's wet and it's deliciously green. The village cafes serve Devonshire Tea, the antiques and craft stores are packed full of bric-a-brac, and the sweet shops sell clotted cream fudge. Yes, step into a time warp and be transported into Middle England. And just a hop skip and a hour's drive over east of Melbourne, in the forests of the Mount Dandenong Ranges.
There are three pretty villages to choose from; Olinda, Mt Dandenong and Sassafras. We chose to visit Olinda today, but have in the past called in all three, and it's easy enough to visit all three in one day. One of the joys of a village visit is to call in on one of their cafes, and many visitors do little more than that. Today we visited the award winning Pie In The Sky cafe, and treated ourselves to their hearty Vegetable Pastie, Mashed Potato, and Peas. If you haven't figured it out yet, we are both ex Pat Poms, so for us this was another reminder of home. It was delicious, and we were relieved to find that we could order a jug of gravy on the side. You'll have to excuse us, but we will probably never buy into the Aussie tradition of Ketchup, sorry Red Sauce, smothered all over a Pie or Pastie. Lashings of gravy however is perfectly fine.
There's no better way to walk off lunch than a spot of window shopping and a sweet treat. Olinda has a number of really interesting bric-a-brac stores that sell everything from antiques to homewares, to soft furnishings, through to toys, and of course the essential tourist offering of homemade candle shops. The most interesting shop is Mangana, They also have an excellent sweet shop, the Olinda Sweet Co, which has a great range of candies, chocolates and fudge, which are definitely on the expensive side, but at the same time great quality and almost impossible to resist. We left with four bags of treats, and only two of them made it back home to Melbourne.
The best way to take in the fresh country air is of course to take a leisurely stroll through the National Rhododendron Gardens, just one kilometre outside the village, and with free entry. In spring you'll be treated to a host of brilliantly coloured blooms of rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias, cherries and daffodils (even the plants have an English feel.) In summer you still get to take in the beauty of the gardens and the forest fragrances, and stare in awe at the huge fifty meter plus Mountain Ash trees. You need at least two hours to walk around the perimeter of the gardens, though shorter walks are available.
The gardens are also home to some really interesting Fauna, including the Superb Lyre Bird, which is one of Australia's most interesting birds. The males have an impressive colourful metre long tail and a well known ability to mimic just about any sound it hears in the forest. We were fortunate to find two in the Gardens, and it was the songs that grabbed us. The Lyre Bird was mimicking a Kookaburra, then a magpie, then a parrot, and then what I can only describe as a 1980's space invader machine. Absolutely incredible, and loud enough to be heard from over a kilometre away.
The Mountain Villages are a wonderful respite from the hottest summer days, and we really appreciated the change in scenery and temperature. It was also nice to get just a little taste of home.
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