Mount Ritchie Hike (16km)

Between Melbourne and the Victorian Alps, Yarra Ranges National Park gathers some of the Central Highlands' most recognisable mountain country into one broad sweep of forest, river headwaters and high plateaus. It is a park of towering wet forests and deeply shaded gullies, where Mountain Ash rises above tree ferns and pockets of cool temperate rainforest survive in protected creek valleys. Around Marysville, Warburton and Healesville, the ranges form the backdrop to towns that sit on the edge of much larger, darker country.

Water is one of the reasons this landscape has remained so heavily forested. Much of the park lies within protected catchments, and these mountains feed the Yarra River as well as major reservoirs that supply Melbourne. That history helps explain the contrast visitors notice here: some parts feel readily accessible from the valley roads, while large sections remain closed off and comparatively undisturbed. In practical terms, the park is not just scenic upland country but one of the key source areas for the city's drinking water, with most of its area managed primarily to protect those catchments.

The park also carries a long human history. Yarra Ranges National Park sits on Country connected with the Wurundjeri People, and official park information recognises it as part of an Aboriginal cultural landscape with a continuing relationship between people, land and water. Older layers of non-Aboriginal history are still present as well, from former timber and tourism areas to roads and river corridors shaped by earlier settlement, fire and resource use. Those traces matter because this is not a remote wilderness in the usual sense. It is a mountain landscape close to Melbourne, but one with a long record of use, protection and recovery.

What gives the park its particular character is the way those elements overlap. The same ranges that shelter rainforest gullies also hold subalpine country around Lake Mountain, and in winter they include some of the closest snow areas to Melbourne at Lake Mountain and Mount Donna Buang. Elsewhere, the Black Spur is part of the park's identity, with its tall ash forest creating one of the best-known road landscapes in Victoria. Taken together, the region feels bigger and more varied than its name first suggests: not a single valley or ridgeline, but a whole belt of mountain forest where water, elevation and history shape the country at every turn.