This is a selection from recordings made during two field trips to  Kangaroo Island (30th November to 14th December 2024 (early summer); and 5th April to 13th April 2025 (mid-autumn)), five years after the catastrophic bushfires of unprecedented scale during the 'Black Summer' of 2019-2020. The goal was to make recordings in natural locations that were free of anthropogenic noise: recordings of the Island's characteristic natural places as they are 'in and of themselves', manifesting their own natural spirit. I knew that this would be difficult, but I also believed that it was possible. I was correct on both counts: it was difficult, but it was also actually possible. It involved seeking out gaps in (human) time and space: gaps that allowed those natural places to 'be themselves' and 'speak for themselves'. For two weeks, as much as possible, I explored an Island quite different from the one being visited by tourists and the one inhabited by most locals. (I thought of it as the 'alter ego' of the Island; or rather, as its 'true face'.) That involved being alone (for me, 'alone' simply means: 'all one') with the island, and being in places at times when other people weren't. (But that's my usual modus operandi, anyway.) The experience was beautiful and spiritually fulfilling in many ways. There were a few special places that I had intended to visit during my first trip, but which were subject to seasonal closure (to protect the bird breeding season). I was able to visit these during my second trip.

When the collection of recordings is complete, it will become available at https://hearingbeings.bandcamp.com/. I will not be posting all of the tracks in the final collection here at Soundcloud, but I do intend to post a few more tracks, here, during the progress of the project.

Kangaroo Island: Natural Sounds and Soundscapes [in progress]

A few samples of Bush Stone-curlews (Burhinus grallarius) calling during the night at Snake Lagoon, Flinders Chase National Park, Kangaroo Island/Karta Pintingga. (Also heard are Boobook Owls.) The samples have been selected from different times during the night from a continuous overnight recording. The location is about one and a half kilometres from the coast.

Recommended: listening with good quality headphones (preferably open-backed) or monitors, with a flat frequency response, at a moderate volume, in a quiet environment.

Nominal location: -35.952516, 136.656604

Inset photo of Bush Stone-curlews by Track photo credit: John Barkla (https://birdlife.org.au/bird-profiles/bush-stone-curlew/).

2024.12.04-05 Bush Stone-curlews. Snake Lagoon. Night. Early Summer.

This selection from an unattended overnight recording commences around 05:11 ACDT at a location less than a kilometre from the coast. It begins (appropriately) with a small group of kangaroos feeding nearby. The first most clearly audible bird calls are from a Superb Fairy-wren. Then, very gradually,  embraced by the perpetual breath of the ocean, the dawn chorus unfolds. In the foreground, a Tawny-crowned Honeyeater tentatively and quietly gives form and voice to its morning song.

Recommended: listening with good quality headphones (preferably open-backed) or monitors, with a flat frequency response, at a moderate volume, in a quiet environment.

Approximate location: -36.017999, 137.139567

Recorded mindfully and respectfully on land and water which, although not indigenously inhabited for some 4000 years, remains to this day of fundamental cultural, spiritual and historical importance to the mainland Ramindjeri, Ngarrindjeri, Kaurna, and Narangga peoples.

2024.12.01 Dawn at Cape Kersaint. Early Summer.

A wind-brushed dawn. The low roar of the Southern Ocean a kilometre and a half (one mile) away. A Red Wattlebird nearby (Anthochaera carunculata clelandi, a subspecies endemic to Kangaroo Island).

The longer recording, of which this is an early segment, can be heard here: https://soundcloud.com/hearingbeings/20241205-a-windswept-early-summer-dawn-at-snake-lagoon-kangaroo-island

2024.12.05 Wind and Red Wattlebird. Snake Lagoon. Early Summer.

Two excerpts from a longer dawn recording made in early summer at Cape Kersaint (in Vivonne Bay Conservation Park, Kangaroo Island), isolating and focussing more closely on two passages of dawn song from what is almost certainly a Tawny-crowned Honeyeater. The longer dawn recording (see link below) begins with what may very likely be this same individual Tawny-crowned Honeyeater, commencing its dawn singing extremely tentatively - almost as if it's singing for the first time, or hasn't sung for a very long time! If it is indeed the same bird, then, nearly one hour later, it is far more confidently producing these more complex and original variant melodic-rhythmic phrases.

Many thanks to @mikesim for noticing and inquiring about the first of these two passages in a comment to the longer dawn recording.

Related recording: https://soundcloud.com/hearingbeings/2024-12-01-dawn-at-cape-kersaint

2024.12.01 Tawny-crowned Honeyeater. Two Excerpts. Cape Kersaint. Early Summer.

A peaceful, meditative natural soundscape: the gentle wind through coastal forest; the deep roar of the Southern Ocean a mile away; and, immersed within the matrix of these elemental forces, a dispersed, quiet, but alive and recovering, early summer dawn - announced quite emphatically at the beginning of this recording by a nearby Red Wattlebird. (The Red Wattlebird's early 'wake up' calls are the only louder passage in this entire piece. It's a Red Wattlebird subspecies (Anthochaera carunculata clelandi) that is found only on Kangaroo Island.)

Recommended listening: Good quality headphones with a flat frequency response (preferably open-backed); or good quality stereo monitors. Relaxed deep meditative listening at a quiet time with minimal interference from extraneous noise. 

A note on the track image: The panorama photograph was taken from the middle of Snake Lagoon, facing the eastern forest margin of the lagoon. The recording was made from within the forest itself. At the time the photograph was taken, on 5th December 2024, Snake Lagoon, like most of the inland lagoons of Kangaroo Island, was dry, although its fertile soil floor was nevertheless green with flora, richly fertilised by the droppings of Kangaroo Island Kangaroos and Tammar Wallabies feeding on that same flora. Its dryness was due to a protracted period of unseasonal drought, a drought that was a major contributing cause to the devastating Black Summer bushfires of 2019-2020. Those bushfires also raged through the coastal forests surrounding Snake Lagoon, which are seen, here, in this photograph, four years after the bushfires.

Related track: https://soundcloud.com/hearingbeings/20241205-wind-and-red-wattlebird-snake-lagoon-early-summer. (An excerpt from the first part of this longer recording, featuring the dawn calls of the Red Wattlebird.)

2024.12.05 A Windswept Early Summer Dawn at Snake Lagoon, Kangaroo Island.

A very, very gradually unfurling, utterly unhurried, dawn chorus, beginning from the very first faint bird calls of First Light (Crescent Honeyeaters) in a eucalypt forest near the north-western coast of Kangaroo Island. In various passages of the recording, the gentle, plaintive calls of Glossy Black Cockatoos (an endangered species) can be heard; also, occasionally, the loud, wailing calls of Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos.

A continuous unedited recording. By human time, this extract from an overnight unattended recording, made on Thursday 10th April 2025 (five years after the catastrophic Black Summer bushfires), runs from 05:34 to 07:27.

Recommended listening: good quality headphones (preferably open-backed) with flat frequency response, or good quality monitors, at a low to mid volume.

Recorded mindfully and respectfully on land and water which, although not indigenously inhabited for some 4000 years, remains to this day of fundamental cultural, spiritual and historical importance to the indigenous mainland Ramindjeri, Ngarrindjeri, Kaurna, and Narangga peoples.

2025.04.10 From First Light. Wilderness Protection Area. Kangaroo Island.

𝔈𝔵𝔭𝔩𝔬𝔯𝔦𝔫𝔤 ℌ𝔢𝔞𝔯𝔦𝔫𝔤, 𝔱𝔥𝔢 ℌ𝔢𝔞𝔯𝔞𝔟𝔩𝔢, 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔱𝔥𝔢 ℌ𝔢𝔞𝔯𝔢𝔯, 𝔞𝔰 𝔞𝔫 𝔈𝔳𝔢𝔫𝔱, 𝔞 𝔐𝔬𝔡𝔢, 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔞 𝔇𝔦𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔰𝔦𝔬𝔫 𝔬𝔣 𝔅𝔢𝔦𝔫𝔤.

2025.04.10 From First Light. Wilderness Protection Area. Kangaroo Island.

𝕳𝖊𝖆𝖗𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝕭𝖊𝖎𝖓𝖌𝖘