Australia has fostered generations of researchers, academics and passionate enthusiasts alike that seek to document, protect and preserve our wildlife wonderland. Sound Archivist and Curator Tessa Elieff has a specific interest in collecting the field recordings of these individuals.
Elieff says: "Having spent my childhood growing up on a small country property, I began developing a healthy appreciation of Australia’s natural wildlife and bushland from a young age. It wasn’t until years later as an adult, having travelled overseas, that I realised my love of our wild continent and just how unique that country is.
Tessa Elieff (centre) at Sound, Archives and the Listening Public, British Library.
I have no memory of hearing birds in the rural townships of Germany. I do remember hearing birds on the north-east coastline of the United Kingdom but they sounded very different and there just didn’t seem to be that great a variety. I tried going for a 'bush walk' in the French countryside only to be told by my sympathetic host that I would not find anywhere that was 'not developed', as per the bushland in Australia.
As a remote island, Australia presents birds, beasts, critters and habitats like nowhere else. More than 90% of our reptiles, frogs and plants are endemic. For our mammals – such as kangaroos, koalas and wallabies – that number is just under 90%.
Quite literally, there is no where else in the world like Australia."
Here are some of Elieff's selections of wildlife from the collection and her thoughts:
