Gellibrand Point — 8 Aug 2009 
Excursion report by Anna McEldowney 
Arm End Reserve at Opossum Bay wasn’t a place 
that seemed to hold much promise as a refuge for 
native flora and fauna, having been grazing land until 
recently. However, in August, 12 Field Nats set off 
into the teeth of a howling gale to check out this 
reserve which Mark said had no reported records of 
anything much and the Natural Values Atlas showed 
no records for threatened flora from the whole of the 
Crown title. Before we had left the carpark John Reid 
reported sighting a pair of galahs mating on the 
power lines and after a few minutes walk we had 
found our first threatened species, Cynoglossum 
australe. This was closely followed by finding an 
echidna digging his way out of sight on the sandy 
cliff top. The headland, which juts northwards into 
the entrance to Ralphs Bay, is rabbit and weed 
heaven and includes the big three, African boxthom, 
gorse and boneseed, while the pasture areas are thick 
with capeweed and sorrel. There are also areas of 
serrated tussock (. Nassella trichotoma ) and this weed 
alone may cause some serious management issues 
for the area. 
We walked clockwise around the reserve to Gellibrand Pt., via the repeater tower at White Rock, morning 
tea at Mary Ann Bay, and the Gellibrand Vault, burial place of several of the Gellibrand family from the 
mid 1800s. Several people insisted that the walk was pointless unless we went right out to the point where 
we were pleased to see the predominant vegetation was Correa alba looking very healthy in spite of 
many years of drought and the largest plant of Astroloma humifusum most of us had ever seen, covered in 
flowers and its green edible berries. 
We felt that we were walking on the dinner table as the stony foreshore was littered with crab remains and 
occasional fish bones - obviously the site is well used by sea birds. 
The Spit, on the eastern side of the reserve, is a bird breeding area but the beach nearby provided a 
sheltered lunch spot and a chance to hear a spotted marsh frog in a pond behind the shoreline. High tides 
and waves had cut into the shore at Shelly Beach exposing fascinating layers of shell deposits, some of 
which were beach deposits and others were probably more of the middens which dominate the coastline 
of this reserve. 
Bird list 
Pied Oyster Catchers (Lauderdale and Hope 
Beach) 
Sooty Oyster catcher (Hope Beach) 
Red -capped plovers (carpark, Arm End Reserve) 
Kelp Gulls 
White fronted chats 
Pacific Gulls 
Swamp harrier 
Flame robin 
Black faced cormorant 
Little black cormorant 
Crested terns 
Superb blue wrens 
Skylarks 
Goldfinches 
New Holland honey eaters 
Forest Ravens 
Yellow-ramped thombill 
Starling 
Little grass bird 
Galahs 
Tasmanian Field Naturalists Club BULLETIN 336 Oct 2009 p4 
