How To Bottle a Feeling of A Winter Yurt Stay in the Dandenongs?

On a grey, long winter weekend, we drove up into the Dandenong Ranges to do a getaway-cation in a yurt. Somewhere, the cold is prettier and the air smells of wet eucalyptus and woodsmoke.

Every trip of ours starts the same way: a small ceremony of leaving the city. It’s usually shakshuka at Tall Timber, but I wanted to have an earlier lunch at the tea house there (Vi’s suggestion). So this one began at Tone Coffee Roasters, where I wrote a few slow pages while Fafa read in the corner of the glassed white box.

There is something about journaling on the morning of a trip. I can write myself into the right mood, then I carry it with me up the mountain, all the way to the yurt.

Lunch at Olinda Tea House

By midday, we were at Olinda Tea House, hungry and enthralled by the beauty of this place. Truffle fried rice, Chongqing chicken, a glass of wine and chicken mousse cake, both for me. Everything was really good, we overate as expected.

Emerald Alkira Yurt Farm

A yurt, if you have never slept in one, is a round room with no corners. This yurt sits overlooking paddocks and green hills, with a forest on its shoulder, farm animals dotted about, and birdsong all day long.

Rain came and went. I drank wine slowly by the fire in the afternoon and kept it going into the night. Fafa cooked dinner over the grill: steak, greens, and portobello mushrooms that came off the dark and smoky

Later, I journaled in the dark by firelight, the pages too dark to even reread the sentence I wrote before the current one. And somewhere between glasses of wine, I told Fafa that we shall come back to this yurt every winter.

Another mini tradition, up here, where winter actually feels like the cozy winter I read in the books.

Morning at The Farm

I had set alarms for 5 am and 6 am, which was ambitious. I turned both off and let the God of cozy win. No regrets.

Then Fafa suggested a morning walk, and the day cracked open. Dewwed paddocks. Farm animals are going about their small mornings. A sky that had finally decided on blue. I took photos, and I journaled. This time I could reread, and I wrote, in exactly these words: I am so so so happy. And one question circling as I wrote: how do you bottle a feeling like this?

Back at the yurt, coffee with a dash of milk. Fafa claims I just like saying “a dash of milk” for the sake of saying it. He is not wrong.

We showered slowly, packed, and left the yurt with heavy hearts. Some places hold me gently. This is one of them.

Strawberry Man in Sassafras

The drive home doubled as a treasure hunt through Sassafras. We drifted through the courtyard filled with knick-knacks, a well-stocked new-age shop and then a vintage bookstore

I came away with a candle named Happiness (buying happiness in candle form, an on-brand activity for me), a sleepy room spray, a lemon myrtle and coconut body mist, Yoyo candy for me, and jelly candies for Fafa.

On the way out of the hills, we picked up a jar of truffle honey from a roadside stall run by a man who referred to himself as the Strawberry Man.

Home Again

Back in Melbourne, we stopped at Nasi Pedas Melbourne for an Indo takeaway dinner and an ingredients haul. The last small ritual of the weekend getaway.

How do you bottle a feeling? I am still working it out. But for now: a candle named Happiness on the shelf, truffle honey in the pantry, woodsmoke smell on my coat, a red pebble in my souvenir jar, and scribbles written by firelight in a yurt. That is the closest I have come.

We shall be back next winter, in the same yurt, with the same fire.

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