Catalyst: The Soundtrack of Australia on ABC TV – In 1977, we sent a Golden Record of the sounds of Earth into space with NASA’s Voyager probes. This cosmic calling card inspired ABC Radio’s nature journalist Dr Ann Jones to create her own version of a golden record of Australian sounds.
In the second episode, Ann continues her acoustic odyssey with the sounds we can’t hear.
Joining a research ship off Perth, Ann hunts for the Pygmy Blue Whale, an animal that makes one of the lowest sounds on earth.
Ann’s curiosity about sound takes her to one of the quietest natural places on the planet. In remote Northern Territory, on Warramunga land, Professor Hrvoje Tkalčić shows Ann a monitoring station designed to detect any infrasound radiating out from a nuclear blast.
At a Sydney clinic, Ann gets an extraordinary glimpse of a couple’s yet to be born baby through the use of ultrasound, sound at a frequency higher than humans can hear.
Sound allows some living things to make sense of their world. In busy Sydney Harbour, Dr Leroy Gonsalves shows Ann a bat species carving out an extraordinary evolutionary niche.
To explore the sounds that break all the rules, Ann joins champion whip-cracker Georgia Pitman to uncover what makes the iconic whip-cracking sound. Georgia’s skills are put to the test as they reveal a fleeting shockwave.
Production Credit: Catalyst, ABC
Catalyst: The Soundtrack of Australia – Tuesday 22 August, 2023 at 8.30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview
TV Central ABC content HERE
