Understand what nature is telling you with Andrew Skeoch

Disney’s 2016 remake of The Jungle Book, Phillips Noyce’s Rabbit-Proof Fence, and the upcoming Eric Bana movie Force of Nature are just some of the films that have featured Mr Skeoch’s nature soundtracks.

Now, he’s visiting the Goulburn Valley to share his knowledge.

Mr Skeoch is an educator, naturalist, author, environmental thinker and one of Australia’s best-known nature sound recordists, and he has been documenting the sounds of wild environments around the world for the past 30 years.

His work is featured through his label, Listening Earth, which contains over 100 recordings he worked on alongside his partner and photographer, Sarah Koschak.

His recordings can also be found in the audio installation at Sydney Wildlife World and feature in the currently touring Australian Geographic/Northern Pictures immersive installation, Our Country.

After recording these sounds for over 30 years, Mr Skeoch felt it was time to take a different path into education and recently released a book, Deep Listening to Nature, which helps people develop the skills to listen to the sounds around them successfully.

This change made him realise how little people knew about listening to nature.

“One of the things I realised is that listening to nature is a skill we’re not taught to do, and we need to develop that capacity, which is a mixture of two things,” Mr Skeoch said.

“It’s developing a meditative attention to stay tuned into nature, and the other thing is learning nature’s history, learning species, what sounds different species make, and that takes you into asking why they use that sound and how it has evolved.

“The book is about all of that and helping people to appreciate the sounds of nature, to enjoy them and be curious about them.”

Mr Skeoch said the key to understanding nature went beyond understanding the species of a bird or animal and its sounds — it was about developing the skills to interpret what they meant.

“If you think about it in terms of communicating with humans, yes, you want to know who’s talking, then you have to speak their language, then you get to what is being said and what’s the meaning,” he said.

“To me, simply learning the species is the first step; next is looking at what’s happening and how do I interpret it — that’s learning the language of nature and recording what you’re hearing.”

Mr Skeoch will be visiting three libraries across the region starting at Tatura on Thursday, February 8, to share insights into his work and new book.

“On my tour, I’m going to use audio recordings and spectrograms, which are computer-generated images that are a visual representation of the sound, so you can see the frequencies and the structure of the sound,” Mr Skeoch said.

“Since COVID, people are more aware of their relationship with nature and how beneficial it is to be in the bush and tune into life in a sense of balance.

“What I’m offering people is a new perspective on doing that.”

To read more about Mr Skeoch and his work, visit his website, listeningearth.com