Trekking past the egret tower, a group of Year 1 students are busy making observations. Walking on the track at the Hunter Wetlands Centre, members of the group ask no-one in particular, “What’s that noise?” and “What’s that smell?”

Fiona Strahan, a teacher at the Wetlands Environmental Education Centre, turns and gently quietens her troops.

“If you are really noisy the animals will all run away,” she says. “You need to be quiet and use your sense of sight.”

The group continues on its walk to view egret and ibis nests. With binoculars scanning the sky, the students soon start spotting the hundreds of noisy birds and thousands of nests among the trees.

“I can see a nest,” Max B says.

“I can see birds,” adds Seth W.

The boys are among 100 Year 1 and 2 students from Warners Bay Public School on an excursion to the centre. They are just some of the 9,000 school students who will visit the centre this year.

Located at Shortland on the western outskirts of Newcastle, the Hunter Wetlands Centre provides school programs through a partnership with the Wetlands Environmental Education Centre (WEEC), one of the 23 environmental centres operated by the NSW education department.

The WEEC runs a range of programs and activities aligned with curriculum outcomes. The WEEC’s principal, Christine Prietto, says the programs work on a “simple hierarchy” where junior primary school students first examine what a wetland is.

“As they get older they look at how a wetland works and how to find out if a wetland is healthy,” Ms Prietto says. “Then when they get into high school the program splits into specific topics where they are looking at ecosystems, species adaptation and management issues.”

The Hunter Wetlands Centre provides rich pickings for students. Situated on 45 hectares, the area is visited by more than 200 bird species ranging from endangered freckle ducks to jabirus, magpie geese and even wandering whistle ducks from central Australia that fly in during times of drought.

Reptiles including eastern long-necked turtles, swamp snakes and eastern water dragons are on site and there is also evidence of wetland animals such as bandicoots and swamp wallabies.

Although affected by wet and dry seasons, the centre’s ponds are home to an abundant range of plant and animal species. Following recent good rains, the centre is brimming with life.

“The wildlife comes and goes with the different water levels,” Ms Prietto says. “It’s a very dynamic scene and changing all the time.”

The area’s significance was recognised in 2002 when Shortland Wetlands was declared a Ramsar site, under the international treaty that recognises significant wetland areas and promotes conservation.

Yet the site has not always enjoyed such good conditions. In the 1980s the degraded swamps were in need of urgent attention and in 1985 community groups launched a campaign to save them. Volunteers from local conservation groups commenced work on the site with help from the education department, Newcastle City Council, BHP Billiton and other local industries.

“Old sporting fields were restored as wetlands and the degraded areas were rehabilitated to a more healthy state,” Ms Prietto says.

Volunteers do the ongoing work and many of the early partnerships continue. The result is a mix of educational programs and visitor facilities, including an extensive library that houses “an enormous amount of documentation of the property itself and wetlands in the lower Hunter”, Ms Prietto says.

During the excursion, Warners Bay Public students spend their time looking at flora and fauna in the Wetlands Environmental Education Centre’s classroom and examine live animal displays in the visitor’s centre.

Outside, armed with binoculars, they observe different bird species and collect fish and invertebrate species at the dip net pond.

WEEC teacher Carolyn Gillard tells students to be on the lookout for damsel flies and water scorpions.

“We are going to see some interesting things in the water,” she tells the students.

“If you keep your eyes peeled, you might see a tortoise or, if it’s long and skinny, an eel.”

Inside, another group of students work to identify the species collected from the pond.

Byron Leek, in Year 2, is busy peering into a microscope. The contents of the Petri dish show up on a television screen connected to the microscope.

“Oh, you’ve got an oval water bug,” Ms Prietto says.

Warners Bay Public Year 2 teacher Carrie Jacobi says the students’ work at the wetlands centre ties in with a HSIE unit they are doing on the wet and dry environment.

“It also complements our literacy program because the words being used expand the students’ vocabulary and will help them back in the classroom when they write information reports,” she says.

Ms Jacobi, whose school visits the wetlands centre every two years, says the excursion is probably “the best one we do in the early years” because of its “hands-on learning activities”.

“The students get to experience the minutiae of the environment that they don’t normally see,” she says. “It brings their attention to an ecosystem that is around them but that they’re not aware of.”

Ms Prietto, principal at the WEEC since 1994, says the level of interest shown by schools is growing.

“Our bookings are increasing all the time,” she says.

She believes the growing interest among the wider community about the environment and conservation issues partly explains the increased interest. While some schools have maintained regular visits to the centre since its opening in 1986, each year brings new schools visiting the centre for the first time and 15 per cent of visiting schools now travel from outside the Hunter and Central Coast region.

“When students come they experience this wetland but we try and put that in context of wetlands globally, wetlands in Australia and especially wetlands in their local area,” Ms Prietto says.

“Very often students, even if they don’t realise it, have some familiarity with wetlands because they live near one or drive by one every day. This excursion offers an opportunity for them to find out what is happening in habitat that they go by each day.”

Ms Jacobi says another reason behind the popularity of the centre is word of mouth.

“Teachers talk to each other and as soon as someone visits the centre, they pass on how fantastic the excursion is,” she says.