Each year, in the frigid depths of a mid-winter night, the sun dances above the main street in the Dandenong Ranges town of Belgrave, dazzling the delighted onlookers.
But this is no celestial wonder. Instead, the exhilarating display of colour and illumination is part of the Belgrave Lantern Parade – an enormously popular gathering that attracts all manner of hill dwellers.
The sun lantern named Mr Radiance, created and then gifted to the community by Dandenong Ranges artist Rain White, has been a fixture at the parade since it began in 2007.
Belgrave Library team leader Toni Main holding Mr Radiance. Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
Residents and community groups in Belgrave and surrounding towns pour countless hours into designing and crafting lanterns for the parade. The event is typically held on a Saturday night close to the winter solstice and is one of the biggest events on the local calendar.
For a time, Renate Crow was known as the unofficial queen of lanterns. In 2009, she joined the parade’s organising committee until she abdicated her theoretical crown in 2021. Crow, who still creates and repairs lanterns for the parade, says the spectacle of light is a colourful antidote to the sometimes bitter winters in the Dandenong Ranges.
“I do sometimes cry,” she says. “Because it’s beautiful.”
On parade evening, steam punks walk alongside uniformed CFA brigades and school groups. There are stilt artists and fire twirlers, football teams and school students. The parade attracts musicians and children and a bearded wizard – a well-known Belgrave identity often seen traipsing around the town carrying a long staff. There is no formal registration for the parade that shuts down the main street.
“You just rock up,” Crow says. “It’s very grassroots and a little bit free form, but there’s a structure around it.”
After retiring as a registered nurse in bayside Sandringham, Crow was drawn to the Dandenong Ranges. She now lives nearby in Ferntree Gully. But in Belgrave, Crow developed a profound affinity with the town’s artistic community and surrounding forests.
“I feel like I found my people.”
Belgrave is considered an entry to the Dandenong Ranges, marking the steep transition from suburbia to the forested hills. It is the starting point for the Puffing Billy Railway and a tourism destination in its own right.
Passengers prepare to depart Belgrave on Puffing Billy steam train.Credit: Luis Ascui
For decades Belgrave has been a haven for the offbeat and creatively minded – people who have sought a place where they can be their natural and quirky selves. But living in the hills comes with myriad environmental dangers.
George Harmon has loved calling nearby Belgrave Heights home for more than 55 years, even though it has almost claimed his life more than once. In 1969, Harmon bought his current property in Belgrave Heights and built the house in which he still lives, after moving to Australia with his young family to take up a job as a quantity surveyor.
He has since volunteered in many community organisations from the CFA to rotary and is now president of the Belgrave Men’s Shed. But he knows the hazards well.
“The hills are beautiful, but I say to people they can be deadly,” Harmon says.
He always suggests to new residents that they take out extensive insurance policies – advice based on personal experience. In February last year, Harmon and his wife were sitting in their loungeroom when the wind began howling and skies darkened during the day.
“Suddenly, the sky went black, which is unusual for February.”
George Harmon at his home in Belgrave Heights near the lemon-scented eucalypt that snapped and crushed his verandah roof. Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
Just minutes later the trunk of a lemon-scented eucalypt snapped in half and crashed onto the roof of their verandah, destroying the exterior structure but luckily leaving the rest of their home intact.
Although the experiences are incomparable, Harmon says on that day he was reminded of being a young boy during the Blitz in London when German planes bombed the city. Harmon has experienced many storms in the Dandenongs. But the February event brought cyclone-like winds.
“I’d never really heard anything like it before,” he says. “They’re the hazards of living in the hills. If it’s a windy day you don’t go out and stand under trees or drive through the Sherbrooke Forest.”
Harmon and his wife will now spend about $8000 trimming the soaring pine trees in their yard to prevent further damage to their property. He also remembers the devastating Ash Wednesday fires in 1983 in which 12 firefighters were killed at Beaconsfield Upper, not far from his home.
Harmon was serving as a volunteer with the local brigade when the fire swept vast swathes of the state and drew frighteningly close to his own home. The days spent on the back of firetrucks hosing down flames seemed never-ending while homes around him burned.
“Ash Wednesday seemed to go on and on.”
Yet, Harmon has not contemplated moving away. He still finds the natural setting awe-inspiring after living there for decades.
“It’s like a cathedral with giant trees.”
Harmon loves the sense of community and people too. But he gets irritated by graffiti and sometimes asks shopkeepers to clean tagging off their walls to maintain a presentable town.
Belgrave is a retail centre for surrounding communities, including Selby, Belgrave Heights, Belgrave South, Tecoma and Sherbrooke. Census figures from 2021 show there were almost 3900 residents in Belgrave itself.
Mary-Christie Duivenvoorden grew up in Belgrave Heights and her family, whose heritage is Dutch, still farms flowers in nearby Monbulk. Three years ago, aged 18, she opened her shop Fräulein’s Flowers in Belgrave’s colourful shopping strip so she could sell her floral arrangements.
“It’s something I’ve done since I was a little girl – arranging flowers at home in the garden,” she says.
Mary-Christie Duivenvoorden outside her shop. Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
Her business has allowed her to give back to her community. Duivenvoorden loves providing flowers for weddings, funerals and myriad other local occasions.
“Many people in the hills only like to support locally sourced and locally grown organic products.”
She spent much of childhood rambling outdoors, meeting friends in the hills and going for bush walks. Even when she was a teenager, Duivenvoorden says, she preferred to spend time outside than on social media.
“I just feel like people don’t care to look good on the internet up here.”
Although she has never really considered living anywhere else, Duivenvoorden says life in the hills can test the nerves when strong winds are threatening to bring down trees or during the bushfire season.
“It can be quite scary.”
However, the threat of fire, flood and storms has helped strengthen community bonds. Yarra Ranges councillor Peter McIlwain says many residents feel a strong sense of commitment to each other, particularly when disasters strike.
“It does tend to bring people together,” he says.
Despite the environmental pressures, McIlwain says once people move in they tend to stay in Belgrave. Houses prices are typically cheaper than the Melbourne median. The median house price declined to $768,000 last year from $783,000 in 2022.
The townspeople and surrounding communities have also shown a fierce willingness to protect their collective identity. McIlwain describes the fight against a McDonald’s outlet in the neighbouring town of Tecoma as a pivotal event in the community’s recent history.
McDonald’s ultimately won that fight and opened the store in April 2014. However, McIlwain believes the residents gained a new appreciation for the power of their collective voice.
The shopping strip on the Burwood Highway in Belgrave. Credit: Luis Ascui
“It was a big thing where the community looked at itself and realised we are a community, not isolated individuals.”
The Yarra Ranges’ rich Indigenous history stretches back tens of thousands of years. But the roots of Belgrave as we know it today are tied to the local railway station, Southern Sherbrooke Historical Society secretary Marian Matta says.
The Belgrave Railway Station, which is the end of the line today, opened in 1900 even though it was originally named Monbulk and was in a slightly different position to the present day.
The station is a short walk from the historic Puffing Billy Railway, which takes passengers on picturesque journeys through the hills and over heritage trestle bridges between Belgrave and Gembrook. Puffing Billy remains a tourism attraction, carrying 257,518 passengers in the 2022-23 financial year. However, this is down from about 510,000 travelling in the 2017-18 financial year.
Puffing Billy is one of the main tourism attractions for Belgrave and a core part of the town’s identity. Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
Matta says the railway line extension to Belgrave from Melbourne allowed a permanent population to flourish around the station. The town’s tourism golden age lasted between the 1920s and 1950s, Matta says, when holidaymakers would enjoy extended stays in the hills.
Matta recalls that Belgrave lost some of its charm during the 1980s when people were drawn to big suburban shopping centres. “There was a long period where there were empty shops.”
But she believes Belgrave has regained its groove even though its identity was hitched to the arts from its early days.
“It’s the lure of the forest and hills that attracts artistic people – writers and painters.”
Stephen Crombie at Sooki Lounge, a renowned local music venue. Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
Stephen Crombie, who co-owns the Sooki Lounge live music venue and club in Belgrave’s main street together with his partner Suzana Pozvek, says Belgrave has long had a high concentration of musicians too.
“It’s always been in the DNA of Belgrave,” he says.
Crombie and Pozvek took over the venue about 11 years ago after the closure of the former Ruby’s Lounge, which had been shut about 12 months at the time.
“It left a massive hole in the town.”
Crombie says the venue is committed to supporting aspiring local artists as well as hosting bigger acts, which have included Russell Morris, Rose Tattoo and Diesel.
He grew up in the hills, but observes many of those who leave when they are young often find their way back. Crombie says Belgrave offers a sense of diversity and many of the comforts of the city with far less pretentiousness. He believes the community is mostly open-minded.
“They don’t really care whether you’re an ocker or a lefty.”
But Belgrave Traders grants and events manager Jeremy Angerson says it is also the “sweetness” to the air that continues drawing people to the hills.
“You notice it straight away. It’s cleansing,” he says. “It just feels healthy stepping out of your front door.”
Angerson agrees many people are drawn to Belgrave because they find a community that allows them to express their authentic selves without judgment.
“You can exhale and be yourself in the hills,” he says. “All types of beliefs, colours and ages are celebrated.”
Even though the Belgrave Lantern Parade is still months away, Renate Crow is determined to be there again this year proudly showing off her luminous creations alongside thousands of other hills people.
In helping to run the event during the years she was on the committee, Crow found much more than a way to simply volunteer her time. She also discovered her creative self.
“I wanted to be an artist as a kid, but I could never use those words because it just felt weird and uncomfortable,” she says. “But now I feel because of this, I’m a bona fide artist, that feels good.”
Lantern artist Renate Crow in Belgrave. Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
She has become entwined in the Belgrave community, which began when she joined the parade organising committee all those years ago.
“I feel like lantern glue is in my blood.”
Soon, the townspeople will begin creating new lanterns and dusting off those they have already created. They will prepare to parade down the street gathering warmth from the collective light display amid the winter gloom.
And Mr Radiance will rise again.
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