In 1906, George Gordon McCrae wrote two letters to a local schoolmaster at Dromana, Mr G.H. Rogers. His subject was his earliest recollections of an idyllic boyhood spent at Arthur's Seat Run, location of the historic McCrae Homestead on the southern shore of the bay, part of the Mornington Peninsula. In the letters he described in detail the natural history of the area in the 1840s, and the species he particularly remembered 60 years later. In 1939, Charles Daley read an article before the Victorian Historical Society based on these letters, which was published in their magazine in 1940 the year after a large bushfire in January 1939 hastened the disappearance of much of the original surviving wildlife from the area. The names of the species reflect the titles given to them by the original European settlers of the bay.