Visiting Mount Dandenong and Pie in the Sky

Hello people! I’m BACK! After 2 amazing and fun weeks in Victoria, I’m finally home sweet home. My body is still following Aussie time which is 2 hours in advance, which means I find it easier to wake up at 7am now (which is actually 9am in Aussie) compared to before.

Anyway, let’s continue with my posts from Melbourne, shall we? After visiting the city twice, we pretty much saw the gist of it, so we resorted to visiting the suburbs instead. Our plan next was to go up the mountains of Dandenong! This was me waiting for train at a station called Ringwood, which was near our serviced apartment.

witch at Ringwood train station

witch with the railway

To get to Mount Dandenong, one of the ways was to take the metro train to Belgrave and take a bus from there. The good thing about transportation here is that you buy tickets according to the time duration. Which means if you buy a 2-hour ticket, you can take whatever mode of transportation as long as it’s within 2 hours from your first swipe. This makes it that much easier than calculating the fare each time you want to transit and go somewhere. We got daily tickets, which meant unlimited traveling for the day!

Terminus at Belgrave Station

Once we’re at Belgrave station, we walked down the stairs and reached a terminus or a mini bus station. Look for Bus 694 to Olinda, which is the town in Mt Dandenong.

Can’t help but laugh at the picture below! *LOL* Can you guess what Saucer was doing? The fact is, it was extremely cold that morning, and with us being so close to the mountains, it was almost freezing! We could see water vapour forming every time we exhaled, and I tried to capture it on camera but failed. But how funny!

What is he doing?

Soon, the bus arrived and we continued our journey up along a slightly windy road with rain forest surrounding us. It was quite a pretty sight. There were a few stops that we could go, so we decided to start with the peak of Mt Dandenong first, called Sky High.

Sky High Mt Dandenong

Sky High is supposed to be an ultimate viewing point in Victoria since it’s up on the mountains but it was just not our lucky day, for the weather was pretty miserable. It was cold and wet, sometimes drizzling but the worst was that it was foggy throughout! Which meant we couldn’t see anything from the top! *sigh*

Look at the fog!

Not to mention it was freezing cold, so we couldn’t help but get ourselves warm with a cup of hot chocolate!

Hot chocolate with marshmallows

Cafe for hot chocolate

We then took a walk around Sky High, at this area called the Secret Garden, while waiting for the bus to come.

witch at The Secret Garden

When the bus came, we told the driver that we would like to get down at Olinda, which was a town nearby. Again, kudos to the daily ticket! No worries on purchasing tickets for the day!

witch in the bus

In less than 10 minutes, we reached Olinda, a quaint, small and pretty town filled with antique shops, restaurants and the most popular of all – Pie!

Antique shop at Olinda, Mt Dandenong

Along the streets of Olinda

Colourful toy shop

The town was small so we could easily walk around it, and we found the Pie in the Sky! Saucer’s local friends told us that we simply HAD to try pie there, so we made our way to the restaurant!

Pie in the Sky

Wondering why it’s so busy?

Apparently, there’s usually a queue at the restaurant during weekends, but since we’re there during a weekday, we got a table easily, by the window to boot! There were a few varieties of pies available but we asked for a recommendation and ordered the Aussie Meat Pie (Gold Medal winner) and Korma Chicken (Gold Medal Winner). Apparently, most of their pies are award-winning!

All of their pies looked like this

Between the two, we unanimously loved the Korma Chicken pie more. The gravy was thick and savoury with a tinge of spicy curry and I was sure there’s dhal in there! Very well-done Indian-style curry, I’d say! And don’t forget those thin layers of pie crust that fell into crumbs with each slice of the knife. Definitely yummy!

Korma Chicken Pie (AUS$6.90)

The Aussie Meat pie was not too bad either, with loads of chunky and flavourful meat within the delicious pie crust. Perhaps our Asian taste buds just preferred curry more? *LOL*

Aussie Meat Pie (AUS$5.90)

The restaurant was not very big, which made it all the more warm and cozy especially during the cold months of winter.

Pie in the Sky restaurant at Olinda near Mt Dandenong

Pie in the Sky
43 Olinda – Monbulk Rd, Olinda 3788
Business Hours: Mon – Fri (10am – 4.30pm), Sat & Public Holidays (10am – 5pm), Sun (9.30pm – 5pm)
Phone : +61-3-9751-2128
Email : info@pieinthesky.net.au

For the rest of my Melbourne adventure, check out my Melbourne Itinerary.