Because I have been recording programs for 2RPH from home, I have been struck, as you might well imagine, by the sheer amount of ambient noise in the background. I live in a township in the Blue Mountains, a city within a National Park. So you might also expect a greater amount of peace and quiet, relative to our Sydney cousins just down the mountain.

It might the case and if so, then Sydney must be a aural nightmare! From my back garden I can hear all manner of noisy birds (don't get me started on cockatoos!) but they can be mostly screened out of the recording afterwards. Then there are power tools - mowers, edgers, whipper snippers, chain saws, mulchers, leaf blowers, drills, pneumatic hammers and so on. They are a constant almost seven days a week, from 7am in the morning.

What we gained in convenience, we lost in our daily commune with the natural world, which beckons us to listen, beyond the baleful cacophony.