The Southern Peninsula Indigenous Flora & Fauna Association
SPIFFA has a focus on our locally threatened species and threatened ecosystems
We actively promote and support the preservation and systematic restoration of environmental values, habitat and bio-diversity on both public and private lands
SPIFFA was convened in October 1990, incorporated in 1992 and continues to contribute to community education and public debate with the aim of helping to retain the last remaining, greatly diminished, biodiversity of the southern Mornington Peninsula region and the Nepean Peninsula
This site is a peninsula focussed ecological information, education and networking resource for individuals, students, friends groups, landcare groups, students and private and public land managers
The links will direct you to a whole world of environmental and land management sites
The main picture on this page is Wilson's Folly in the Pt Nepean National Park
This is one of the few areas of the Nepean Peninsula that may look similar to what it did when HM survey ship Lady Nelson sailed into Port Philip Bay under Lt. John Murray in 1802
This is a sheltered grassland bowl with scattered Coast Banksias and on the ridges, Moonah, Wirilda and groves of Drooping Sheokes. The once co-dominant Sheokes are notably absent in this photograph, having been systematically harvested for lime burning up until the early 20th century and the regrowth grazed by livestock, to the point where they are now only sparsely distributed in the landscape and would need some help to return to their former prominence in the southern peninsula eco-systems
A combination of occasional burning by the Burinyung-balluk people and grazing by locally extinct grey kangaroos and wombats and seedling browsing by the still present wallabies would have kept these grasslands and grassy woodlands open and closely cropped, resulting in the impressions recorded by the first europeans*
The Coast tea-tree, peviously only in specific coastal zones where it's eco-system niche is unstable dune sand, comprehensively colonised the land disturbed and degraded by the widespread clearing and sustained cattle and sheep grazing of the past, i.e almost all of the Nepean Peninsula. As their life-span can be measured in decades, rather than centuries, whole cohorts of tea-tree can be seen dying back in many places and giving way to other, longer-living, canopy and understory species, neatly illustrating the process of longer-term natural succession in severely disturbed eco-systems
Download a paper "The vegetation of the Nepean Penisula, Victoria, an historical perspective" Cunninghamia 2009
* "The southern shore of this noble harbour is bold high land in general and not clothed as all the land at Western Point (Port) is with thick brush but with stout trees of various kinds and in some places falls nothing short, in beauty and appearance, of Greenwich Park .... I went on shore and walked through the woods a couple of miles. The ground was hard and pleasant to walk on, the trees are at a good distance from each other and no brush intercepts you; the soil is good as far as we may be judges. I saw several native huts and very lately they have burnt off several hundred acres of ground. Young grass we found springing up over all the ground we walked ..... To describe this part I walked through is simply to say that it nearly resembles a walk on Blackheath and the Park if we set out of question the houses and gardens of the latter. The hills and valleys rise and fall with inexpressible elegance. We discovered no water nor any new wood of consequence, but it is impossible that a great want of water can be here from the number of native huts and fires we fell in with in our march ..... I took a long range through the woods attended with an armed party. The ground we walked over was open and the same as before described, with good soil ..... Sent an armed party and our carpenter (on) a long range through the woods to try the different kinds of wood. None however was found of use, the trees being almost invariably oak (sheoke) and other wood (banksia and wattle) quite common at Sydney"
from the log of HMS Lady Nelson
This is one of the few areas of the Nepean Peninsula that may look similar to what it did when HM survey ship Lady Nelson sailed into Port Philip Bay under Lt. John Murray in 1802
This is a sheltered grassland bowl with scattered Coast Banksias and on the ridges, Moonah, Wirilda and groves of Drooping Sheokes. The once co-dominant Sheokes are notably absent in this photograph, having been systematically harvested for lime burning up until the early 20th century and the regrowth grazed by livestock, to the point where they are now only sparsely distributed in the landscape and would need some help to return to their former prominence in the southern peninsula eco-systems
A combination of occasional burning by the Burinyung-balluk people and grazing by locally extinct grey kangaroos and wombats and seedling browsing by the still present wallabies would have kept these grasslands and grassy woodlands open and closely cropped, resulting in the impressions recorded by the first europeans*
The Coast tea-tree, peviously only in specific coastal zones where it's eco-system niche is unstable dune sand, comprehensively colonised the land disturbed and degraded by the widespread clearing and sustained cattle and sheep grazing of the past, i.e almost all of the Nepean Peninsula. As their life-span can be measured in decades, rather than centuries, whole cohorts of tea-tree can be seen dying back in many places and giving way to other, longer-living, canopy and understory species, neatly illustrating the process of longer-term natural succession in severely disturbed eco-systems
Download a paper "The vegetation of the Nepean Penisula, Victoria, an historical perspective" Cunninghamia 2009
* "The southern shore of this noble harbour is bold high land in general and not clothed as all the land at Western Point (Port) is with thick brush but with stout trees of various kinds and in some places falls nothing short, in beauty and appearance, of Greenwich Park .... I went on shore and walked through the woods a couple of miles. The ground was hard and pleasant to walk on, the trees are at a good distance from each other and no brush intercepts you; the soil is good as far as we may be judges. I saw several native huts and very lately they have burnt off several hundred acres of ground. Young grass we found springing up over all the ground we walked ..... To describe this part I walked through is simply to say that it nearly resembles a walk on Blackheath and the Park if we set out of question the houses and gardens of the latter. The hills and valleys rise and fall with inexpressible elegance. We discovered no water nor any new wood of consequence, but it is impossible that a great want of water can be here from the number of native huts and fires we fell in with in our march ..... I took a long range through the woods attended with an armed party. The ground we walked over was open and the same as before described, with good soil ..... Sent an armed party and our carpenter (on) a long range through the woods to try the different kinds of wood. None however was found of use, the trees being almost invariably oak (sheoke) and other wood (banksia and wattle) quite common at Sydney"
from the log of HMS Lady Nelson
SPIFFA Inc. is closely affiliated with IFFA Inc., the Indigenous Flora & Fauna Association www.iffa.org.au
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