The reason most of my students won't spend this time voluntarily is because they fear that 32 segmented, blood sucking annelid. Yes, the leech. However our land leech, at no more than 5 cm fully stretched, with a lovely orange yellow striped pattern is a poor cousin to the 48 cm water leech of the Amazon. Small comfort for those bordering on hysteria.  

If they took their time on a sunny summer's day and let the afternoon roll on while sitting in the cool air held at about 84% humidity, they might see all manner of things.  

Sometimes a red belly black snake will slither into the creek pools, or perhaps a diamond python will move from branch to branch. Large monitors could also visit the pools along with many types of skinks.  

Then there is the birds, twittering continually in the canopy. Bursts from the Eastern Whipbird, Satin Bowerbird or maybe even the baby-like cry from a Catbird. Strutting constantly along the leaf littered forest floor, often mimicking other bird's calls would be the lyrebird. Even if these become a blur to my student's minds, the insects whirring around should bring them to their senses.  

Or perhaps the students will become engrossed in the goings on of the leaf litter critters themselves, the centipedes, springtails, flatworms or earthworms. Maybe they could just marvel at the variety of fungal fruit bodies, the wooden brackets, covered in spore dispersing flies. The bright orange brackets, or the jelly moulds or the coral fungus. So many mushrooms! They come in all manner of exciting shapes colours and sizes.  

Of course the vegetation doesn't run away during the afternoon and the enormous variety could keep anyone sitting and observing very busy. There are the epiphytic ferns, the elkhorns and bird's nests, ground ferns and tree ferns. There are palms such as the cabbage tree and bangalow.The forest giants include coachwood, sassafrass, lilly pilly, snow berry, and maiden's blush. There are vines as thick as your leg, little delicate orchids, soft mosses, liverworts and filmy ferns as well as hardy lichens and slimy algae. It is within this forest that we may find the primitive flowering plant Bolwarra, or the other such as mountain pepper or Polyosoma. These are to name but a few.  

As the afternoon turns to evening, the frogs will probably be heard. There could be Peron's tree frog, the Leaf Green tree frog or a host of others.  

When night finally envelopes the forest we might hear the owls like the Mopoke or even the Powerful Owl searching for a meal of a brushtail or ringtail possum. Maybe we'll see a mountain brushtail or Antechinus. If we're really lucky, we'll see a quoll!  

As we bed down for the night, the glow worms will provide the small green lights along the banks like fairy cities.  

We'll almost certainly awake to the dawn chorus of the entire bird population, so loud we'll marvel at how so many birds could stay almost invisible.  

When we leave to come back home to a hearty breakfast, aghast at the diversity of life within our rainforests, we might realise that we've only scratched the surface. We may also feel so sad that of the original rainforests that were here 200 years ago along the south coast of NSW, there's probably only 1% left.