Native flora and fauna have co-evolved to reflect local natural conditions.
An area of calcareous sands and dune limestone stretches from the western tip at Point Nepean along Port Phillip Bay to Rye and then south-east via an irregular cross-country path to Bushrangers Bay on the south coast. This landscape yielded the lime deposits sought here since the first attempt at European settlement in 1803 and underscored the initial economy on the Nepean Peninsula.Western Port’s intertidal mudflats are one of the most important areas for waterfowl, particularly migratory waders, in Victoria.Much of the coastal area of Western Port between Tyabb and Bittern has national or state recognition, if not international recognition, as a habitat for a number of birds and mammals.
It has been estimated that only 6 to 7 percent of the indigenous vegetation remains on the Mornington Peninsula, some of it on private property and that few of the original stands of trees remain.This environment had been shaped by humans long before the arrival of Europeans. Although Aboriginal occupants lived in relative harmony with the natural environment, it is thought that they regularly used fire as a means of shaping vegetation, encouraging new growth and, perhaps, helping to flush out animals during hunting.
European occupants reduced the indigenous tree cover through a number of activities. Wattle bark stripping was one of the earliest industries practised at Western Port. Lime-burners used She-oaks, coastal Banksia and Moonah to process limestone, leading to the near elimination of these trees. By the 1850s, piles and sleepers were cut from the hills and shipped to Melbourne via Shoreham.17 Selectors cleared their blocks to make them suitable for agriculture, sometimes selling the timber, sometimes simply burning it. European pastoralists and selectors also used fire to clear land and to encourage pasture.
In pre-contact times, the Mornington Peninsula was part of the territory occupied by the Boon wurrung (or Bunurong) people22, whose land stretched along the coast from roughly the Werribee River to Andersons Inlet, and up to the Dandenong Ranges. The Boon wurrung had a rich and plentiful diet to choose from on the Peninsula. There were abundant native marsupials, including possums and kangaroos and more than 50 edible plants. In addition shell middens located at various points along the coast, including those of Western Port, indicate that several species of shellfish were also available. The Boon wurrung also caught and ate fresh fish and eels. Almost all of the European explorers who sighted the Mornington Peninsula in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reported seeing fires burning around the coast of both Western Port and Port Phillip bays.
Archaeological research carried out on the Peninsula in the 1970s has located many shell middens along coastlines and scatters of artefacts on farmland, particularly near waterholes, such as at Tyabb. A number of artefacts have been found on private land, such as that around the Craigavon homestead at Merricks North. It may be possible that this high point, from which one can look out over Port Phillip Bay, was another camp site for Boon Wurrung people.