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

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.)

At the time this recording was made, 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. Four years later, their regenerative growth is quite remarkable, but still has far to go.

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.

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 of southern Australia.