Back in Time

Location
Noosa Queensland
Equipment
Zoom F4
Sennheiser MKH 60
Boom pole array
and
Roland R09
 
Today as planned I went out to the Noosa Museum in Pomona. The people there were really friendly and helpful. The old guy Bob went through the place with me switching on old machines and using old tools so I could record the sounds. He also gave me a heap of info about various things, how they worked and some of their history. I love this work.

So I spent about 20 minutes trying out old telephones and an old telephone exchange, I recorded a Morse code transmitter and thanks to a help sheet that indicated the codes for the entire alphabet I recorded all of the alphabet and numerals, so once they get catalogued people will be able to recreate actual Morse code messages which could be fun.

Noosa Museum

I couldn’t ignore that one of the most interesting sounds in the place was not any of the exhibits, but the old wind blown air vent up on the roof. It circulates air into the building just by spinning in the wind, and there is a shaft down from the top of the roof into the interior. One of those was making a great squeaking sound as it spun, so I extended the boom pole right up into the roof to sample it. Downstairs I recorded the old industrial butter churn as well as a whole bunch of old hand operated house appliances, then I recorded some old adding machines and another old typewriter. Bob also started up an old rotary plough from the 1950’s. It only took him three tries to get the thing started; I remember my mum’s old lawnmower being harder than that to start! In all I recorded about an hour of really good raw material that’s going to add some really interesting material to the library. I’m also thinking I might want to create another category for historical sounds so I can differentiate between a 50 year old car or typewriter and newer ones.

www.noosamuseum.spiderweb.com.au/

Industrial Butter Churn