About Ferntree Gully Many of my books are set in and around Ferntree Gully, a real-life leafy suburb about thirty-five kilometres east of Melbourne, Victoria (Australia). Ferntree Gully, home to the Wurrundjeri people prior to white settlement, takes its name from Eugene von Guerard’s famous 1857 painting Ferntree Gully in the Dandenong Ranges. Ferntree Gully nestles around the foothills of the Dandenong ranges, which boasts such attractions as the Puffing Billy railway and the Baluk Willam Floral Reserve. A visit to the National Park is well worth the trip. Fern gullies and clear streams line the thousand steps that take you (if you’re fit enough!) up into a beautiful, silent world of towering tree ferns and meandering paths. Further down Ferntree Gully is the Tim Neville Arboretum with its maze-like walkways, secret gardens and lovely lakes. Then there’s the Upper Gully market, the One-Tree Hill picnic ground or the Ambleside Park historical homestead. But wait! There’s more! FTG is also along the Heidelberg School Artists Trail, which is designed to lead to the approximate sites shown in the paintings of associated artists (for the whole tour, there’s a guide brochure available from the Banyule Council) The fictional Riley/Brown/McNeil family and Terry Diamond from the ’Laundry Series’ all live in FTG. But while the former have an old weatherboard not far from the National Park and all its scenic beauty, Terry (from Odd Socks) specifically bought her unit in a more suburbian part of the area to avoid the noisy wildlife. Maggie Brown et al live and work nearby but, I hasten to inform anybody interested, her business venture is purely fictional. The other characters all live in suburbs not far away. Harold lives in a rose-strewn cottage in Upper Ferntree Gully, Rose lives in a unit in Ringwood (until she marries Harold anyway), and the Woodmason clan live in nearby Croydon. From Each Way Bet, the house where the Broadhurst sisters spend Melbourne Cup day is situated on the border of Ferntree Gully and Upper Gully, near the National Park. The Family Tree is set in Lysterfield (south of Ferntree Gully) and in Boronia, which is next-door.Non-fictional areas in the books include the library on Burwood Highway (where Terry works), the huge shopping centre (commonly known as Knox City), the arboretum, the William Angliss Hospital, the local tennis club (where Terry plays), and even the all-you-can-eat Wantirna restaurant (from Spin Cycle).
