Project Development

Farina is a ghost town in the Far North of South Australia. It was founded in 1876 as an agricultural community despite advice from Surveyor General George Goyder, whose famous ‘Goyder Line’ denoted areas of reliable rainfall in the then colony, with Farina falling far outside of this boundary (Sheldrick 2013). Following multiple seasons of crop failure and the introduction of the Ghan railway venturing further north, the town became a service centre in Central Australia in the early to the mid 20th century, the population gradually declining in tandem with new technological developments. After the town’s desertion in the mid-1960s, the area came under the custodianship of Farina Station, a pastoral lease station. In recent years, there has been significant restoration activity by the Farina Restoration Group, preserving Farina as a historic desert pioneer town (Olston 2009).

Like many colonial South Australian towns, Farina’s survey plan borrowed from that of Adelaide, a gridded street system with border terraces in each cardinal direction. To the west, a train line ran north to south, supporting a hub of activity throughout the town’s history. Many businesses and dwellings were situated in the town, with various trades represented: the ruins include those of an underground bakery, hotels, blacksmiths, general stores, stables, plus police stations, schools and churches. Surrounding the town were numerous multicultural presences including an Adnyamathanha (local First Nation) camp located to the north above the creek line, gardens established by Chinese railway workers, and a Middle Eastern cameleer camp situated further to the west on ‘Afghan Hill’.

Conception and Collation

For my initial ideas and research, several print sources were consulted. Rob Olston’s book, ‘Farina - From Gibbers to Ghost Town’, provides a comprehensive historical overview of the town’s development, and was gleaned for references to industrial, technological and cultural dynamics that would have contributed to the evolving soundscape (2009). A subscription to the Farina Restoration Group’s newsletter provided information of the redevelopment activities, and further historical records were identified through correspondence with the Group’s volunteers. Additional resources from DEWNR and the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) were both consulted for environmental and climatological information.

From these records, I compiled a list of potential sound sources related to biophony, geophony and anthropophony. Each of these has developed throughout the town’s history. The biophony was initially composed of native animal vocalisations, later diversifying and competing with introduced species. The geophony, occupying a significant omnidirectional presence, is sounded through seasonal fluctuations between drought and flood and conveyed more subtly through the dry reverberance of the open, flat landscape. The anthropophony exists at multiple levels, at the microscale with sounds related to specific industries (hotels, bakery, blacksmith) and the macroscale with changes to infrastructure (primarily transportation and the changes of transit technologies on the ground and in the air). Influenced by this information, I conceived the idea to creatively reconstruct the soundscape, mapping the town’s acoustic evolution its 140-year history from settlement to the modern day.

Field work began in June 2016, in the South Australian winter. This involved recording with a Zoom H6 portable recorder in various habitats, including gibber plains, scrubland and the creek. I was also able to engage with many locals, both permanent and transitory, whose specific knowledge of environment, industry and culture in the area informed my understanding of place. Amongst them were the Farina Station owners, Kevin and Anne Dawes, the head baker and president of the Farina Restoration Society, Martin McLennan, and many others, grey nomads from around Australia. While there, I also had the opportunity to participate in an annual commemorative ceremony conducted by representatives the of the Royal Australian Air Force, acknowledging the death of Farina- born Flight Lieutenant John Bell, one of the first Australians killed in World War II.

In February 2018, I returned to Farina for further fieldwork. In the midst of summer, where each day exceeded 40oC, I made field recordings in each direction surrounding the town - in the north and west by the creek beds, in the east close to the railway ruins and the south amongst a plain of gibbers. Also, I spoke further with Kevin and Anne Dawes, who allowed me access to the various scrap materials around the site for further investigation off-site.


Preparation and Composition

Assembling the work began by devising a schema for the temporal contraction of the 140- year history to a concert work duration. Each year (1876-2018) was attributed ten seconds, with an additional set of 20 seconds at the beginning to establish the soundscape before European colonisation. This gives a total duration of 24 minutes.

Then, drawing on the multiple sources of textual information including Rob Olston’s book and the interpretative signage at Farina, a spreadsheet was made compiling textual references related to animal, weather and human-orientated activities at Farina in chronological sequence. From this, the various sources of biophony, geophony and anthropophony and their related periods of activity were deduced.

Electronics

The electronic component was designed around an octophonic speaker array, which was correlated directly with the cardinal and intercardinal directions of the town’s design. This permitted the representation of Farina’s spatial dynamics, particularly of the creek’s water flow in the north (flowing NE to NW), the transportation thoroughfares to the east (flowing interchangeably between NE to SE), and the omnidirectionality of weather patterns (Fig. 36). In Ableton Live 10, the ambient soundscape was first developed, using interwoven samples of the 2018 field recordings made in each direction.

Initially, panning was achieved with the ‘Surround Panner’ Max for Live patch. However, during development, a suite of ambisonic Max patches, ‘Envelop for Live’, were released, featuring an encoder, a decoder, and multiple spatial effects. Given the versatility of ambisonics and the effects within the Envelop suite, the switch to Envelop was made.


Separately, components for the geophony, biophony and anthropophony were developed. The Geophony featured two tracks entitled ‘Storm’ and ‘Thunder’, developed from a 2016 field recording made at the flooded Wilpeanna Creek, and peaking wind noise in the 2018 Farina recordings respectively. The amplitude of these tracks was automated in response to rainfall records at Farina, with the minimum and maximum values mapped to a range of -30dB to 0dB in the ‘Rainfall’ Max patch.

Relying on the direction field recordings to represent the native wildlife, the biophonic components featured exotic animals primarily associated with the town’s pastoral and transportation activities. These included cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, dogs, horses, donkeys and camels. Many samples of each animal were collated, and, using the Sound Particles software, which allows the creation of sonic particle systems, unique group arrangements of the samples were made. These were then arranged in the Ableton according to appropriate times and spatial locations. While some animals occupied particular locations (i.e. cattle and sheep in the NW at the stockyards), others moved more freely, and for these samples, the Envelop Spinner patch was used to randomise spatial position in playback.

The anthropophonic components featured transportation and infrastructural sounds. Like the Biophony, samples of trains, planes and cars were sourced from historic foley recordings and positioned with respect to appropriate times and spatial locations.

Basic filtering was done through Sound Particle’s ‘Air’ plugin, with the Temperature control automated by temperature records from Farina (from 1908 to 1939) and Marree (from 1938 to 2015), with missing years filled from sets of the available data. The automation of the plugin’s Humidity control (devised from the rainfall data) was also tested but removed due to awkward filter sweeps resulting from irregular rainfall patterns.

Instruments

Drawing on my insightful experiences with Cheryl Leonard in mid-2017, and her practice of using found natural objects as instruments, I was attracted to the idea of using found objects as percussion instruments for Farina. During my fieldwork, I came across many objects lying on the ground, including wood, corrugated iron, scrap metal, glass bottles, and bone. Linking the intended performers of the Farina Restoration Group to the inhabitants of old, I had the idea that these materials could be associated with their related trades, wood and metal for construction, glass bottles for hotels, bells for churches and schools, and so on.

Knowing that any onsite performance would have to take place in winter, I planned to engage the Restoration Group volunteers as a community percussion orchestra, as a means of engaging the current community with the area’s soundscape, and sociocultural and historical identities. As such, the work was envisaged to provide both learning and (re)connection through active participation of volunteers in as performers, rather than passive observation.

Text scores, recognised for their ability to articulate sonic ideas and information outside of traditional Western musical concerns (Hope 2017), were chosen as the most effective and accessible means of conveying instructions to performers. Information was restricted to instrumentation, time cues, relative dynamics, and spatial location. Like the octophonic speaker array, the performers were assigned particular directional locations from which to play, related to the direction of the industry they were representing.

Realisation

On 19 - 22 June 2018, I travelled with percussionists Vanessa Tomlinson and Josh Baldwin to Farina to realise the work. This trip was supported by funding from the Outback Community Authority and the Farina Restoration Group.

Two workshops took place. On Wednesday 20th June, Tomlinson, Baldwin and the community members explored sound-making with found objects collected that day. On Thursday 21st June, the sound explorations were integrated into the full work, and rehearsals with the electronic track took place.

Also on that day, I realised that the multichannel snake cord necessary for the 8-channel playback was missing. Fortunately, two cords were sourced from the nearby community of Leigh Creek and Copley to allow for stereo playback, and as such, the Envelop ambisonic decoder was rerouted to ‘stereo’.

As described by Leonie Kerley, who documented the Restoration Group’s activities that week:

Wednesday night practice was fun. Blowing into bottles to make them sing, whistle or hum was interesting; surprisingly difficult for some. The ‘found objects’ included horse shoes, an old stock pot, a hub cap, an old wood stove, bottles, dog spikes, corrugated iron, old metal and a fork. Thursday night dress rehearsal indicates we have a hit on our hands (Kerley 2018).

On Friday 22nd June, Farina was performed outside Tom’s Shed at dusk, attended by approximately 60 people.

5pm and complete silence at Tom’s shed. The audience is keen to be involved and walk or stand silently within the square. The sound, pre-recorded by Jesse commences and the percussion by the ‘musicians’ begins. 24 minutes of goose bumps from the eerie sounds of wind howling, train, planes and birds and the sounds of the found objects being tapped, hit, banged and stroked, reaching a crescendo and then ebbing to peacefulness and it was all over, coinciding with the setting of the sun (Kerley 2018).