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.

Every track or mountain road swooping down the flanks of the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria, seems to reveal another lavish, frond-filled gully. Among them, Sherbrooke Forest is one of the prime ...