ORIGMA RESERVE TRACKLISTOrigma Reserve is a 10 hectare off-grid bush property surrounded on all sides by healthy Sydney sandstone forest under various titles - Aboriginal Land, State forest, Crown Land, and private ownership including gazetted Conservation Reserves. The property is bounded on the east and west by 100m ridges, and a valley wetland runs south to north. There are relictual rainforest species on the south-facing slopes, swamp mahoganys dotted amongst dense stands of tall paperbarks on the wetland margins, various combinations of ironbark/turpentine and bloodwood/angphora on the hillsides. Signs of pre-colonial occupation, such as grinding grooves and sand-floored caves dot the landscape. I’ve been making audio field recordings there since purchasing the title to the property in the mid-1990’s, to preserve it from development. The dominant larger tree species are yellow bloodwood, forest grey gum, cabbage gum, ironbark, turpentine, various angophora and paperbarks. As with the tree combinations, the diverse understory plants vary depending on elevation, proximity to water, cardinal direction (ie sunlight) and underlying geology. It is remarkable how slight the ecological shift needs to be for the botanical complex to vary. There is very little weed invasion, other than along the vehicle tracks and what’s arrives in floodwaters from upstream ‘developed’ properties a few kilometres away.I’ve documented over 125 bird species there, seven species of microbat were identified by a specialist team, there are various possums including so-called ’squirrel’ gliders, swamp wallabies, eastern grey kangaroos, wombats, bandicoots, innumerable invertebrates and a decent reptilian diversity from tiny geckos to meters long goannas, red-bellied blacks, tiger and brown snakes to huge swamp pythons. All these lifeforms are entangled in ancient evolutionary networks, reliant on each other in so many ways. Understanding and appreciating the bush is not about the indexical cataloguing of individual species, separated from this crucial entanglement - the tangle IS the thing! This brief presentation of a very few recorded encounters from the past eight years gives some sense of the brilliant aural diversity of intact Sydney sandstone country. Future episodes of Sonic Sketchbooks will further explore this audio archive.