For the March Friends of Freycinet working bee at Freycinet, a small team of volunteers was gathered. With the week's beautiful sunshine, our to-do list quickly shrank. Staining the Cape Tourville boardwalk and Richardson's Beach viewing deck is the group's primary March assignment. Cape Tourville, which we frequently call the nicest "office" in the world, is a great place to spend a few days with a view of the peninsula and out to sea.

We divided into two teams for most of the week because staining only requires a small team. A crew travelled to Isaacs Point at Friendly Beaches on Tuesday and Wednesday to assist in getting the area ready for reopening following significant fire damage in October 2023. Before helping to lay gravel in the camping area, the crew worked on trimming the beach access track, repairing the track’s Bayco wiring, and clearing a sand drift. Pruning the access paths to the beach at Middle Friendly’s was one of the other projects in the region.

On Wednesday after completing their work at Friendly’s, the team visited Middle Bank to perform some camp area maintenance, such as fence repairs, pruning, and the dreaded garbage collection. Returning to the Visitors Centre it was then a quick search of its grounds for sweet pittosporum.

With two teams still in operation on Thursday team one set off to Douglas-Aspley National Park to perform some remedial work on the loop track from the parking lot to the Aspley River waterhole. Work was done on the track's drainage, pruning, and, of course, garbage collection. It was then onto Bicheno with both Whalers Lookout and Lookout Rock tracks being pruned before the hunt for sweet pittosporum and other weeds began. 280 sweet pittosporum were removed along with a couple of mirror bushes.

The other crew meanwhile, slipped on their walking shoes and made the 20-kilometre round trek to Wineglass Bay and Hazards Beach to survey the area for sea spurge. Two juvenile sea spurge were discovered on Hazards Beach and four at Wineglass Bay.

Our final day saw the group head to Bicheno and Harveys Farm Road, the northern end of the National Park, to weed mullein and Spanish Heath for the morning. 88 mullein were found along with 2457 Spanish Heath seedlings, with many more still to be removed – a job for our next working bee in May.

Thank you to the Wildcare volunteers – Ralph, Peter, John, Ros, Marilyn and Robyn, the Visitor Centre staff who joined us throughout the week – Nic, Glenn, Mon, Ellie and Jane and finally thank you to all the Rangers who worked alongside us.

Jenny, coordinator FOF

Friends of Bass Strait Islands

2021 Island Arks Symposium VII