Running Time:

97 min

Release Date:

July 2015

Recording Location:

Near White Mountains National Park, Queensland

The Gulf Country - Northern Australia

This soundscape from Australia's tropical north is one of the most spectacularly biodiverse we have encountered in this part of the country.

The Gulf Country is a region of northern Australia, where open grassland and scattered woodlands drain across flat lands to the Gulf of Carpentaria. It is a tropical savannah landscape, with a distinct wet and dry season, and the mosaic of habitats make for a complex mix of species.

This recording captures a single morning from dawn onwards, as birds move around the woodland, feeding and socialising. There is such a diversity I can only begin to mention species, but lorikeets, friarbirds, whistlers, butcherbirds, babblers, weebills, apostlebirds, honeyeaters, gerygones, coucals and orioles are prominent. Kangroos can also be heard huffing, and as the morning warms up a soft hum of bush flies emerges.

The recording location is on the eastern edge of the gulf country, and hence you'll hear both species characteristic of the region, and others from more easterly distributions.

It is a rich mix!

Andrew comments:

In flat, open country such as this, it is difficult to predict where the focus of activity may be, and hence where to place microphones. Often I wake to find birdsong thinly distributed across a wide landscape. But on this occasion, even though it appeared to be undistinguished woodland, the level of activity audible in this one spot was extraordinary. For me this recording represents a perfect balance of a wonderful range of voices, without becoming too overwhelming. Sometimes you get lucky.

Incidentally, the Australian bustard pictured on the cover is a signature species of this region - however it is usually silent!

(This continuous album is presented as four tracks for listening convenience. If burning to a CDR, omit the final track and it will fit on a single 80 minute disc.)

Audio sample of this album

1.

6.04 am

24.23

2.

6.28 am

28.51

3.

6.57 am

26.18

4.

7.23 am

17.06

Purchase this
album as:

Digital Album

(for immediate download)

$12.00
$12.00

Download this album
for as little as $7.50 -
View Special Deals

(Prices AU$, exGST)

About the audio formats

Mp3:

Mp3 is a universal audio format, playable on iPods, computers, media players and mobile phones.

Mp3 is a compressed format, allowing smaller filesizes, offering faster download times and requiring less storage space on players, but at some expense to the audio quality. Many listeners can't really hear the difference between mp3 and full CD-quality audio, and hence its convenience has lead to it becoming the default option for audio.

Our albums are generally encoded at around 256kbps (sometimes with VBR), balancing optimal audio quality without blowing out filesizes excessively. We encode using the Fraunhoffer algorithm, which preserves more detail in the human audible range than the lame encoder.

Our mp3 files are free of any DRM (digital rights management), so you can transfer them to any of your media technology. You've paid for them, they're yours for your personal use without restriction.

Mp3 files can be burned to disc, either as an mp3 disc, or an audio CD after converting them to a standard audio (.wav or .aif) format first.

FLAC:

FLAC is a high-quality audio format, allowing CD-resolution audio. It is ideal if you wish to burn your files to a CDR, or listen over a high resolution audio system. However files usually require special decoding by the user before playing or burning to disc.

FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is a LOSSLESS compressed audio format. This means that it preserves the full audio quality of a CD, but optimises the filesize for downloading. Typically, file sizes of around 60% are achieved without any degradation or loss of audio quality from the source files at the CD standard of 16bit/44.1kHz.

Obviously the file sizes are larger than for the mp3 version - usually around 300-400Mb for an album, compared to 100Mb for an mp3 album.

In addition, you'll need to know what to do with the files once you've downloaded them. In most cases you'll want to decode the files to wav or aiff, either to import into programs like iTunes, or burn to CDR. Some programs will play flac files natively.

There is a lot of information about flac online (eg: http://flac.sourceforge.net/)