Confluence

This album is a series of soundscapes composed for the art exhibition - WATER - presence & absence which showed at the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre from 10 December 2022 – 29 January 2023. It was part of an installation by Rochelle Summerfield, Tracy Pateman and Will Rodgers.

Confluence - A Sonic Journey along Biirrinba from the Granite Belt to the Sea.

I live less than 20km from the western edge of the Clarence River catchment. Water that falls on my property in the Granite Belt travels west into the Murray Darling River system, but those same clouds that drop rain here travel east and also contribute to the source of Biirrinba, the Clarence River.

These soundscapes have been recorded at sites on Biirrinba over a distance of more than 300 km. Over 20 sites have been used as source material for the soundscapes - at multiple locations in Thorndale, Amosfield, Ruby Creek, Rivertree, Tabulum, Plains Station, Copmanhurst, Seelands, South and North Grafton, Lawrence, Broadwater, Tullymorgan, Ashby, Maclean, Harwood, and Yamba. At each site, long ambient recordings have been made as well as shorter opportunistic snippets to capture a unique sound, creature or event. Each soundscape piece is a montage of multiple recordings carefully edited and curated to produce a snapshot of place - a sonic memory of landscape. Water is the binding element that threads its way through each piece - from the first thunderstorm on the Granite Belt to the sound of the waves on the Yamba Breakwater at the River’s mouth. It is a celebration of water falling on the eastern edge of the Great Dividing range forming tributaries that join to form the mighty Birriinba at Rivertree, which then grows inexorably into the massive watercourse that snakes through the lowlands and emerges into the Coral sea in the South Pacific Ocean at Yamba - a journey of over 400 km.

Album art by Rochelle Summerfield