It'll take a long time
Reflections on two trips to Kangaroo Island (2019, 2020)
Over the years I’ve frequently listened against the quiet of natural landscapes, straining to hear something materialise out of them. Barren landscapes, seemingly devoid of life - such as deserts - will not offer up much, perhaps just the wind brushing around the ears. So in places like this I keep my expectations low and enjoy the moments of quiet in such an overwhelming and noisy world. However, encountering quiet in landscapes where there is evidence of life can be disquieting. We naturally assume - through either naivety or ignorance - that trees, vegetation and bodies of water are indicative of functional ecosystems and that everything must be fine. If we’re inclined to listen in on these places, it can be dispiriting then to encounter a paucity of sound, lacking in diversity, consistency or anything at all.
In September 2020 I was in the south-western region of Kangaroo Island, which nine months prior had been affected by fierce bushfires that had burned approximately one-third of the island. Here in the south-west, practically everything had been affected by the fire, thousands of animals had perished and the Flinders Chase National Park was scorched. Since the park was largely off limits to visitors, I decided to survey - from the vantage of the roadside - some areas of bushland that surrounded it. When I set out on foot at 6am from the caravan park with my recording gear I wasn’t expecting to hear a great deal, but I was eager to document evidence of some life returning to a fragmented, regenerating landscape.
As I walked a couple of kilometres along the road in the direction of Flinders Chase, quiet prevailed against the eeriness of the surroundings. Following a wet winter, the landscape had been provided with a boost to advance its process of regeneration. Along the roadside, bursts of green leaves erupted from the charred stumps and gnarled limbs of huge eucalypts, whilst the blackened yacca (Southern Grass Tree) were already bursting with dense fronds. This native flora is accustomed to fire, and the regrowth evidenced here is very much part of its natural cycle. Yacca in particular can live for up to five hundred years, its distinctive blackened appearance visibly bearing its previous encounters with fire. It survives by virtue of its growth-point being buried underground. Eucalypts are more exposed to fire, but their capability to regenerate- a process known as epicormic growth - is no less remarkable.
I’d never seen regrowth occurring on this scale before and it felt as though I’d set down on an alien surface. From the roadside I unpacked my recording gear and set up. Further heightening the alien impression, my equipment made for a strange contrast: a metal tripod with microphones fixed to it, its cables trailing back to a portable recorder. The tripod stood on terrain mottled with patches of red earth, moss and traces of blackened twigs and branches. Dew shimmered from the fresh leaves of regrowth, beams of sunlight wavered, heavy grey clouds hung in the distance. Before hitting ‘record’ I listened in for a while, finding a comfortable standing position and remaining as still as possible. I wondered if I was the only human in a one or two kilometre radius. At this moment in time it seemed probable as I had encountered no cars on the road that morning. My eyes were now closed and I began to hear light winds stir through the epicormic growth of the trees, the distant creak of branches and a few intermittent drips. Then, like scanning through the quiet static of a radio band, I began to notice the birdsong.
When I was last in the south-west of Kangaroo Island - almost a year prior with my partner - I didn’t need to actively tune into or seek out birdsong, since it was coming through loud and clear. If I was actively listening in, it was case of thoughtfully discerning what was making what sound. The intention of our visit in October 2019 was to walk the Wilderness Trail through Flinders Chase, a five-stage, sixty-six kilometre hike through bushland, along sandy beaches, past the Remarkable Rocks and back into the bush once more. I made plenty of recordings over our five days on the Wilderness Trail and many of these remain treasured documents, especially the banjo frogs of Rocky River.
The Rocky River was a key feature on day one of the hike. It provided an impressive location for a picnic lunch and a beautiful spot for recording. The river’s tannin-coloured runs over a plateau of glacial rock and boulders below, here the water stalls in shallow pools before coursing through narrow fissures of rock and tumbling into lively cascades. I’d already heard the frogs and cascades at a distance, from a promontory along the trail. Turning a bend, I heard the frogs’ distinctive ‘plonk’ punctuate the air against the whisper of yacca and eucalypts overhead, between the crunch of our boots on the trail the sweet sound of the cascades that filtered through softly . At the river, an exposed section of rock allowed me to walk to the centre of the river, where rivulets of water found their way through narrow openings. The rock was darkened, spotted with lichen and warmed gently by the September sun.
I could see how the nature of the river had over many years worn away paths for the water to flow. I set the recorder down on a small tripod facing upstream, towards the stillness of the river, where the water trickled through. Behind me the water picked up its pace and joined a succession of cascades downstream. Against the distant roar of the cascades, the frogs - along with some honeyeaters and wrens - had quietened since our arrival, perhaps aware of our presence, so we waited. After a minute or two, the frogs resumed and began boisterously pinging calls across the river. Their calls would echo slightly as well, reflecting off the surface of the still water and sections of rock. The honeyeaters and wrens chattered away out of sight in the surrounding vegetation. It remains one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever visited with a soundscape that continues to captivate me.
About sixty days after this recording was made dry lightning strikes ignited sections of scrub to the north of Flinders Chase. Despite efforts of containment and further exacerbated by dry conditions and high winds, the fires rapidly grew out of control and made their way south. By the end of 2019, about a third of Kangaroo Island had burned completely or was burning. Virtually the entire extent of Flinders Chase would be incinerated. Back home in Adelaide, beneath skies of smoke and falling ash, I was anxiously doom scrolling the news. Refreshing the Country Fire Services website to reveal that Kangaroo Island was ablaze and I remember the first thought that crossed my mind was of the fate of the Rocky River site I had documented scarcely two months prior.
Around the time that we returned to Kangaroo Island in September 2020, there had been a multitude of essays and articles published, reflecting on the aftermath of Australia’s Black Summer bushfires. Drawn from largely personal accounts, a constant theme across these writings was how cataclysmic events such as this affects our perception of space and time. Informed also by the arrival and uncertainty of COVID-19, we were as Katherine Murphy observed “off balance” and “suspended between the set of propositions that existed before the pandemic and the set of propositions that exist now.” In her essay Black flowers: Mourning in ashes, Kirsten Tranter had written of the New South Wales fires, of days filled with smoke and how the ash filling the air “seems to have travelled not simply through space but through time, challenging not only geographic scale but temporal scale, too.”
For most of January 2020 I couldn’t listen to the Rocky River recording. When I went outside and saw the ash settling across everything I wondered how much of this was from Kangaroo Island. Was some of this particulate matter even from the Rocky River site? Catastrophes throw everything off-axis, so anything - however fanciful or terrifying - was conceivably possible. It disturbed me, especially when documents of places that are now wounded and silenced sat on a portable hard drive. At this point in time they seemed like specimens in jars that were too painful to go anywhere near. Eventually my mindset would heal and adjust and I’d come back to them, but before that, time was needed for the smoke and ash to clear.
This essay was written as a companion piece to a new installation work by the author (Two Sites [2023]) which is to be exhibited in a group exhibition - “Solastalgia” at Coral Street Art Space, Victor Harbor (4th to 31st August 2023)
References:
Murphy, Katherine. ‘After the coronavirus, Australia and the world can never be the same again’, The Guardian, 28 March 2020, theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/28/after-the-coronavirus-australia-and-the-world-can-never-be-the-same-again
Tranter, Kirsten. (2020) “Black flowers: Mourning in the ashes”, in Fire, Flood, Plague. Vintage.