We’re going on a swan hunt!
So…last weekend we set off to hunt black swans.
Will has an art exhibition coming up in Wagga Wagga in August and one of his audio pieces is about the ‘swan hoppers’ in that area. The poet and writer Mary Gilmore, who grew up in Wagga Wagga in the 1860’s and 1870’s wrote of the ‘swan hoppers’:
Their work was to hop the swans off the nests in the breeding-season, and smash the eggs. It was filthy work; they reeked of the half-hatched and the addled, and their trousers grew stiffer and stiffer, and filthier and filthier, as the yolks and the whites of the smashed eggs set in the material of which they were made. The old cattle town of Wagga Wagga once had its swan-hoppers on all the stations round about; and the more they stank the prouder they were
They did this because graziers in the area thought the birds were a nuisance, polluting water ways and some of their cattle died from ingesting feathers trapped in the grass. The ‘swan hoppers’ ignored and defied the local indigenous people’s, the Wiradjuri, sanctuary regulations.
We headed off first to Brisbane and then the Gold Coast to find black swans and hopefully to get some recordings from them.
On our first day we explored lakes around Sandgate but saw nothing and spotted our first distant swan at the Kedron Brook Wetlands reserve. After that we found nothing at the Minnippi Parklands so headed on down to the Gold Coast. We stayed near Danger Point in Burleigh and late in the afternoon headed off to Lake Orr at Varsity Lakes to see what we could find there and got lucky! We found a pair of black swans with six cygnets that were used to being surrounded by people and will was able to get some good recordings. We went back again the next morning and found them again for more recordings. We called in at HOTA (Home of the Arts) to look at some exhibitions there and then on our way home stopped off at Pacific Pines Central Park and found another nesting pair of black swans for more recordings. Hopefully Will has all he needs now for his soundscape.
