My Favourite Places: The Dandenong Ranges

There are places that ask you to slow down, and then there are places that insist on it. The Dandenong Ranges — the Dandenongs, as anyone from Melbourne calls them — are firmly in the second category.

Less than an hour from the city, they feel like a different world entirely. The trees are enormous. The air is different. And on the right morning, with mist threading through the fern gullies and the forest completely still, it's one of the most quietly spectacular places I know.

The Giant Mountain Ash

The mountain ash trees of the Dandenongs are genuinely humbling. These are among the tallest flowering plants on Earth, and standing at the base of one — looking straight up at a trunk that disappears into the canopy far above — does something to your sense of scale that photographs struggle to fully convey.

I keep trying anyway.

Shooting upward through the canopy is one of my favourite compositional challenges here. The way the light filters down through the leaves, the geometry of the trunks converging overhead, the sheer verticality of it all — it rewards patience and a wide angle. Come back to the same tree in different seasons and it's a different photograph every time.

The Fern Gullies

If the mountain ash trees define the upper storey of the Dandenongs, the fern gullies define the floor. Walking into one feels like stepping back in time — the tree ferns arch overhead, the light goes green and soft, and the temperature drops noticeably.

It's lush in a way that feels almost improbable this close to a major city. The textures are extraordinary — layers of fronds, moss on fallen logs, the occasional shaft of light breaking through to illuminate a patch of the forest floor. For photography, it's endlessly rich. The challenge is managing the contrast between the bright sky above and the shadowed gully below, which is exactly the kind of problem I enjoy solving.

Mist in the Forest

The Dandenongs earn their reputation most on misty mornings. When low cloud settles into the ranges overnight and the forest wakes up wrapped in fog, the whole place transforms.

The trees become silhouettes. The ferns disappear into soft grey. Sounds are muffled. It's the kind of atmosphere that makes you want to move slowly and speak quietly, even when you're alone.

I've driven up before sunrise specifically to catch this — that window between first light and the mist burning off, when the forest is at its most atmospheric. It doesn't always cooperate. But when it does, there's nowhere I'd rather be with a camera.

The Birds

The Dandenongs are exceptional for birdlife, and the birds here have a confidence about them that I appreciate. Crimson rosellas will land nearby and regard you with mild curiosity. King parrots — the males in their extraordinary red and green — move through the understorey with a quiet authority.

The superb lyrebird is the one that stops people in their tracks. Hearing one before you see it is the usual experience — an astonishing, complex song that carries through the forest. Spotting one on the forest floor, tail fanned, is something else entirely. I've been lucky a handful of times, and each time it feels like a gift.

Why the Dandenongs

There's a particular quality to the light in the Dandenongs that I find endlessly compelling — filtered, soft, directional in ways that change hour by hour. Combined with the scale of the trees, the intimacy of the fern gullies, and the wildlife that moves through it all, it's a place that rewards repeated visits.

I've been going for years and I'm still finding new compositions, new moments, new reasons to come back. That's the mark of a great location.