Blog This Challenge - My neighbourhood

We are residents of the beautiful Dandenong Ranges here in Melbourne. It is a lovely place to live. Semi-rural and away from all the traffic and noise of the city while being only 50 mins from the centre of Melbourne.
Welcome to our street. It is an unsealed road and has 6 houses in it as well as being a no-through road. That's our fence on the right.
We have the very good fortune to back onto a 72 Acre Kiwi Fruit farm so the view will never be built out. This looks east to the Bunyip State Forest and the Warburton Ranges where some of the Black Saturday fires were in February.

Puffing Billy is a major Tourist attraction here. Lots of Japanese tourists during the week. We go over the lines all the time and seeing the engines is pretty much a daily occurrence. Suffice to say Trains are a big thing in our house with two young boys! That's the front of a train by the way. It is waiting at the station and we stopped on the crossing to get a quick shot. (oooh naughty!)

The Dandenong Ranges have the highest point in Melbourne with Mt. Dandenong. This is a great viewing point for the best view of Melbourne there is. Melbourne City is just on the horizon but is too small to see in this photo. We went up there on Sunday and our boys had a terrific time pointing out where everything is. They also have a small maze that really delighted them as you had to find the hidden treasures and get a stamp to prove you were there. They went through twice!

This is the main shopping strip in Emerald. We live about 5 mins from "the centre of town". Not much really, but there is a lovely playground beside the shops to the left and the train station is behind this. We have the basics and if you need to go to a major centre, Knox and Fountain Gate are both within 1/2 an hours drive.

These are my venues for Retail Therapy! (Shows I don't get out much doesn't it :) )

The beautiful view from my Big Boy Too's Pre-school

The lovely old line of conifers next to the Junior football ground is one of my favourite things. They must be about 100 years old at least.

Just a very small peek at our neighbourhood. It really is a quiet place. On a lovely weather weekend it's buzzing with loads of things. People come out of the woodwork - you always have bikers, there are car rallies with all sorts of cars, old and new, tourists of all kinds.

I love it here. One day we will build our dream home on this block. It is the perfect place to raise kids. Our actual neighbours are great - quiet, happy to say hello and have a quick chat. The kids love to see the Kiwi fruit go through its seasons and are always curious to see which machine is doing what to the crop. I especially love to catch the sunrise and to check out if there is cloud in the valley each morning.

This has been a difficult challenge as I have not been able to devote the time I would have liked so forgive the rather rushed and basic images.

But I hope you love living where you do as much as we love it here.

Irene x