Just as the sails of Sydney Opera House are sometimes bathed in coloured illuminations, so was Montreal Goldfield on Saturday night as part of its weekend BioBlitz.
Around 150 people came to see Bioluminescence, a video projection mapping installation created by Year 9 and 10 students from Bega and Narooma high schools.
Bermagui-based multidisciplinary digital artist Scott Baker oversaw the project, which was run in partnership with The Atlas of Life and funded by Inspiring Australia.
He ran a two-day workshop to teach the students about nature videography.
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They were joined by renowned nature photographer Jessica Taunton who has captured images of nature in the Arctic, Antarctica and Africa.
"She shared her skills and knowledge," Mr Baker said.
"We learnt about video editing and video projection mapping and combined that with event management skills to put together the Bioluminescence at Montreal Goldfield.
"Instead of lighting up the Opera House's sails, we were mapping on to trees," he said.
Another highlight was a talk by Gary Campbell from the Umbarra Cultural Centre who spoke about using Indigenous plants for medicine, food and traps and his people's relationship with the land.
Over the weekend 10 specialist surveyors, including bird expert Barry Virtue, conducted talks and tours as they helped citizen scientists identify different species of plants, insects, frogs, birds and mammals.
Creatures of the night included feather-tailed gliders, sugar gliders, brush-tailed possums and three species of microbats that probably live in the abandoned mine shafts.
"Their wing span is less than 10 centimetres and their bodies are no more than five centimetres," Mr Virtue said.
One ornithological delight was the tiny, brightly-coloured scarlet honeyeater.
"They come here in summer to breed and migrate north for the winter, following the flowering eucalypts," Mr Virtue said.
Also about was a grey goshawk hunting over the forest canopy and a whistling kite with a nest that was probably breeding.
The massive list of plants on the site contained "very few weeds so it is in much better condition than the surrounding forests in the area", he said.
The site was clear-felled in 1880 by gold miners and the bush has since regenerated with no human intervention.
Mr Virtue said the hollows in the forest that house mammals take 100 years to form.
"That is why Montreal Goldfield is so important," he said.
Its uniqueness means it will soon have its own section on the iNaturalist website.
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