2013.03.22 Mt. Dandenong

About 45 minutes west of Melbourne is a national park called the Dandenong Ranges.  The entire national park features picturesque hills and gullies, all covered by a thick, moderate rainforest.  Among the ranges is the largest hill of them all, called Mt. Dandenong.  Mt. Dandenong is a well-frequented attraction for tourists, and also for local fitness and hiking enthusiasts as well.

The national park has been developed to include hiking trails for tourists, and fitness and hiking enthusiasts, including the 1.7 km long, 1,000 step Kodoka memorial walk, leading to a popular picnic area at the top called One Tree Hill.  The area is also well known to be a great place for bird watching and finding wild parrots.  I am not particularly a hiking or bird watching enthusiast, but I had a Friday off and did want to see an Australian rainforest prior to the one I'll be touring in Cairns, so I was more than happy to go on the hike.

The beginning of several trails started only about 15 minutes away from the nearest train station, so we were there in no time.

The walks feature plaques and information on a World War II battle Australians fought in in Papua New Guinea against the Japanese.  Here is a map of roughly where the battles took place.

Anyway, at the base there was a recently built memorial area with information, flags, etc.

After reading some of the information about the battle we started hiking on the trails.  The majority of the rest of this post will just be interesting pictures of the hike with some captions on them.

Above: the beginning of one of the trails.  This one is 1.7 km long and steeper than it looks.

And the trail kept going...

Finally we were at the top - it actualy didn't take that long, maybe about 45 minutes.  Once at the top there was more information (like the picture posted above) and several other areas to go to.

Mt. Dandenong is extremely big, and there are many other significant sights we would have like to gone to, like the observatory, but they were simply too far away to go to without prior planning.  So we continued hiking and visited the One Tree Hill picnic area.

Above: One Tree Hill picnic area

Above: One Tree Hill picnic area

We found more random trails to hike on, and with time to spare continued to do so.

Above: a wild wallaby

Above: wild parrots seen throughout the walk.  I actually wasn't quick enough to grab a very good pic of the parrots, so I stole this one from a fellow exchange student that snapped it.

We hiked for over four hours and were tired.  I thought the hike was decent and I definitely saw more than I was expecting.  I look forward to the rainforest and waterfall tour in Cairns!