Sounds like camping

Full Episode description

No music, no human voices, just the sound of night falling over bushland near Narrabri, recorded by the ABC’s Ann Jones. It sounds like camping.

Narrabri is in North West NSW, in an incredibly fertile farming area. And yep, you guessed it, where it’s fertile, it means you won’t get much bushland left intact.

This bushland is a patch on the Llara Farm which is used by the University of Sydney for research. I was lucky enough to travel there to film a program about technology and nature for ‘Catalyst’ on ABC TV.

This recording differs a little from some of the others I’ve made for Nature Track. For example, there is no way that I can completely remove the distant sound of highway movement, of the endless trucks ferrying agricultural products towards the city.

But this is an incredibly endearing mix of the insect chorus for me. It sounds like camping.

A chorus of ravens in the distance, along with cockies going to sleep, and some sounds I cannot identify kick off this most relaxing soundscape yet.

Listening notes from Ann Jones:

00:00:45 I have no idea what this insect is, but I love it.

00:10:20 I think this is actually a boobook – they make this sound when they’re close to another boobook, rather than calling across a distance.

00:30:35 One of the many sounds produced by foxes. They have a really wide vocabulary and can sound human-like, bird-like and just plain scary in the night.

00:41:00 A bat circles past on its nightly food run echo-locating for both navigation and prey detection.

00:46:30 A sneaky dog. I can’t tell you how much time I spend pulling dogs out of nature recordings. They’re almost ubiquitous in Australian landscapes

00:58:40 I can hear a frog here, that’s sounds a bit like a ruler twanged against a school desk. I think it might be a spotted marsh frog – Limnodynastes tasmaniensis.

01:12:00 A distant boobook, the smallest owl in Australia, along with some fox calls and bat flybys.

01:21:00 The terrifying scream of a barn owl. Yes, they look magnificent. Sound terror-ific too.

Mix Engineer: Isabella Tropiano.

This program is produced on the land of the Wathawurung people.