Friends of Gellibrand Hill Park (now Friends of Woodlands Historic Park) was formed in June 1982 when about 32 people turned up for the first project day, which was spent removing old stock fences and clearing out rubbish from a quarry on Gellibrand Hill. In the years since then re-vegetation and control of woody weeds have been major activities. Some of the revegetation works are described on the Woodlands Historic Park web site. That site also mentions the involvement of the Friends in the Eastern Barred Bandicoot recovery program.
The friends group operated a plant nursery from 1987 until 2020. Plants were propagated in the nursery from seed collected in the park.
An enormous number of volunteer hours have also been contributed in and around the homestead. This includes helping with restoration of the homestead and outbuildings, restoring and maintaining the homestead garden, and providing guides three days a week from when the homestead was opened to the public in Nov. 1984 to when it was privatised in 2006, and for several years after that.
During the 1980s the National Parks Service (the predecessor of Parks Victoria) ran school holiday activities at the park, and the Friends Group provided assistance with these.
In April 1997 a new era began with the first performance of the interpretive theatre production "Chaffey's Woodlands" at Woodlands Homestead. This creative dramatization of episodes from the history of Woodlands was entirely written, produced and performed by volunteers from Friends of Woodlands Historic Park and ran monthly until April 2001. The following year a new show, "Woodlands Federation", was staged ten times as part of the celebration of the Centenary of Federation.
The shows "Journey to Woodlands", "Woodlands New Century" and "Brave Explorers" followed until 2006 when privatization of the homestead made it impossible to continue. In all there were 78 performances at the homestead.
Although there are no longer shows at Woodlands, the Friends of Woodlands Historic Park "show team" continues to perform at other venues. The first "away" show was "Hills of Gold" at Steiglitz for the 2002 VNPA annual picnic. By 2011 the show team had adopted the name "Woodlands Players" and to June 2015 it had performed 27 different productions at 22 locations, each show specially written for the venue.
"Big Pond", their 24th production, is based at Yan Yean Reservoir. It has run successfully from 2011 and is now the second longest running show the Woodlands Players have performed. Enquiries about performance dates and venues can be directed to Woodlands Players via the Contact page.