After overhearing a conversation the other day about not being able to sleep due to new and different sounds when you first move into a new place it made me think about the changes I had to get used to.
When I first came to Wollombi I couldn’t sleep because of the frogs they drove me crazy. That constant croak, croak, croak right at your back door and even more deafening when one found their way into the water tanks or the down pipe. I swore to my husband that I was going to tape the noise of the buses screaming down Blair Street at 11:00 at night making their way back to the terminus to create my own sleep music.
Then came the call of the bulls, the deep bellied growl that I was utterly convinced gave my son nightmares when he was trying to go to sleep. Bring on the thud of the bass from the pub next door.
As we expanded our farm and growing menagerie of animals came the wake-up call, the cockle-a-doodle-doo of the rooster at 5:00 am in the morning. Boy of boy please give me back the noise of the drunken people passing by my unit that I would happily fall back to sleep too.
Nowadays, I don’t hear any of the above and sleep like a baby. Now when I go to Sydney for a night the first thing I hear is the bass, that heartfelt thud that goes right through your body, then the traffic and then the noise of the people.
When my father comes to stay the first thing he always says after his first night here is “I’d put that rooster in the freezer if I was you it woke me up at 5:00 am”. My response is “you will get used to it”.
What keeps you awake at night?