http://g1.img-dpreview.com/3F56E8A0F40344019A76C38CC7E4E4D5.jpg
So I will tell a little story... And propose a course of action.
Driving to Melbourne from Adelaide, with the sunrise over the road as we made our way from tunnels through hills and past, outlying towns of purpose... Probably as far apart as a horse can travel in the times that people Will, with carts and the liquor which makes the stops more like home. I guess those who linger too long, end up making the new estuaries of lanes, avenues and streets, with the toil of the forgotten journey.
Anyway... we took a pit-stop and so I could get a shot of the still rising sun by an old tank.. seen in the linked to photo. We weren't yet at Tintinara but it was close by.. I say this because I still feel it important to know the exact location, even in hindsight.
Standing by the old fence, weathered enough not to find the barbs atop offensive and the Tank just old enough not to see it as a worrying presence upon the bare, Mallee longing torn earth, which is a soil of compressed centuries of footprints. Passed off as one era... of some... pointless original a to b nomads and eccentric animals that get bunkered down to a particular tree until they morph into a shooting star form and crash land in another suitable piece of dirt... re-invented by the constant anxiety of crowded space. i.e. symbiosis.
Walking first to see if the shot was worth taking while my friend took a break from driving.
I stood in this cold air, warm with thoughts of the travel ahead and my adventures await ==== this... hanging breeze, kind of a micro-climate between the few trees and a sheltered wind by the texture of shaped land, some rust hints of earth below.
I can't describe this as it collapsed... from.. open sights ahead in a placid mind, to T.V culture and modern capabilities of what can happen and what utilities humans have in this point in time.. fell with that sinking feeling... of hearing distant screams.
In that cold air, which got a whole lot chillier... I could faintly make out... voices of terror... and some situation.
Will all I had observed of this outlying town and that infront of me, the direction of the sound... flickered the very realistic idea while still trying to make out this noise ... ... firstly... that shipping container? Were people in there... it was too pressing to be a final realisation air would run out... it was more like... something imminent was mounting... and the pained expression I couldn't think of such a thing which could fit in a container with that many lost voices.
A horror movie maybe? Maybe someone is listening to or watching the resulting scene from a long suspense filled drawn out film... I think I heard it repeat a little maybe... it sounds a little in repeat.
But what it really sounds like from here.... is an under ground chamber, beneath the earth... in that general direction...
I didn't want to look too suspicious of anything while walking back to the car to prompt my friend to ">_________________0==---> come.... stand.. over here"...
So I pretended to take some photos of the Tank... and asked him... SHH....hhh.. d... do you... ? um.. just listen""" ..... ... *waiting... *waiting... as a truck roars past and now I can't even make it out and I know what i'm looking to hear. Always happens...seems to stop.
He goes to wander back.. and I urge him to just stand silent for a moment...
his eyes light a tiny... and he looks a little wavered... Like he knows exactly what I think I hear in the brisk morning air with the sun rising a little more eerily on the Day than it was a few moments before.
With the shock failing to sustain my nervous strain.. I have a little casual wander around...
As soon as I spot it... I can tell... deep in that paddock back there... in that ... low lying, large shedded area.... that is where the cries are coming from.
Still... having this information for more rational reasoning...
I listen so quietly, encase my hearing something crucial.. will make it all go away... a distinction between ... an animal... and a human yelling.
It is like... a hundred or more foreign maybe men, are in that slightly modern shed... being tormented..... but it sinks in a little... then ..
then I only hear pigs.....
no other animal I know... just... pigs.
And the feeling doesn't leave me... I suggest.. "should we go down near it and try record the sound??" .. but honestly, my nerves felt the purpose wouldn't equate to the risk, even still. I wanted to keep listening... just to make sure there wasn't something I could do... some slightly, more recognisable... than chillingly real voices I could pick out... maybe some people are mixed amoung the pigs in there.. just maybe.
The feeling didn't leave me like I said... and as we drove away... ... I didn't look back on it.. because it wasn't anything to look back in... it was something... probably still happening... and only a few things I could uncertainly go on thinking. One being the worker, if that place is what it sounds like... and secondly... if to have a camera.. mounted.. some basic filming device, to capture this sunrise... a beauty... the cold air visible in such a barely recovered landscape... I thought... and I know... to record that sound... that place... ... you'd not have to mention the word Veganism any more.
You wouldn't have to ask people... to think about their food.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtnIDwNQbz8 Listening to this song as we drove on through Tintinara... well.. it made me feel a little better, but only because I wasn't thinking about it. The injurious nature of those dawning wails.. well.unwell such a thing can only be.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtnIDwNQbz8
I had a nice time in Melbourne.. and saw lots of things I love... and in fresh eyes.. took photos.. I can't say it took my mind off course... and on the way home I struggled to spot the Tank again or the district/town/what ever it was.
Being haunted by such things is feeble... if not to merely, know ~that- damage is enough... even if it happened hundreds of years ago.. and the land was playing it back... to let you in on a little secret. Than even a stone could be scared by this perceived as noise initially.
I pictured happy piglets a little... in the care of people... but understanding these one's, if that is what they were... wouldn't even be the same species anymore.
I'm not trying to express the way I felt, my moral foundation or anything to do with how it was for me... merely put across the country news broadcast on that morning.. unlike the birds I hear back home.
If you didn't pick up... the course of action was.. just to sit a camera some where near-by.. not too close... and record for 9 minutes or so.
http://g2.img-dpreview.com/CBA8091705CA4D689E5714E5279C2F77.jpg
Here: on the way home in this photo I was trying to get this vibrant blue Dragonfly up close... I snuck in among the bushes... the butterfly plant was spread out and I didn't want to press on it too much, or it might leave the stalk it was on.
I already had photo one of it in focus... so when up close... I took one of the flower first.. that blue blur is the dragonfly... after this I tried to get up real close... but I was a clutz.
Anyway... if you have a look at the flower... you might spot a little friendly green fellow.
I didn't mean for my story to sound so dramatic, that is just what the morning sounds like near a Pig... shed... I guess.
