Gembrook sits on the eastern edge of the Dandenong Ranges, at the far end of the line of Puffing Billy, the narrow-gauge steam railway that winds through the forests from Belgrave, carrying tourists on wooden carriages with their legs dangling out of the windows. Just south of the town, near Pakenham Upper, the country opens into a landscape of rolling hills, orchards, forests and small farms, between the ranges and the plains of the south-east.
The Dandenongs are a range of forested hills just east of Melbourne, with tall mountain ash, tree ferns and lyrebirds, whose extraordinary mimicry can include chainsaws and camera shutters. The forests are beautiful but vulnerable to fire: in 1983, the Ash Wednesday bushfires swept through this area, devastating the town of Cockatoo, a few kilometres north of Gembrook, and other communities. The landscape has recovered, but the memory remains.
Swimming options here are limited and worth knowing about in advance. The reservoirs in the area are water supply catchments, closed to swimming. The best-known swimming spot within reach is Lysterfield Lake, in a park on the western side of the ranges, with a sandy beach and picnic areas, popular in summer. Some local towns also have public pools.
The roads around Gembrook and through the Dandenongs are excellent for riding, winding through forests and over hills, with good surfaces and fine views. They can be narrow, with tight bends, and they are busy on weekends with tourists and cyclists. Watch out for wildlife, especially wallabies and wombats, at dawn and dusk. On the way back from the Otways, this is a long detour east of the city, but the forest roads make it worthwhile. Gembrook and Pakenham have fuel, cafés and bakeries, and if you time it right you can watch Puffing Billy wheeze into Gembrook station in a cloud of coal smoke while you eat.