Deafening cacophony when it’s the Big Day Out in your backyard

In 1975, Lemmy, the lead singer of rockers Motorhead, famously said the band “will be so loud that if we move in next door to you, your lawn will die”.

Fenton Beatty, manager of Tree Services at Northern Beaches Council, says he is often asked by new residents if he can “spray something to get rid of that deafening noise!” He calmly advises, “cicadas are part of the ecosystem. Any chemical treatment would be worse than the problem”. In other words, there goes your lawn ... and the rest of the garden.

“They’re here to stay. It’s just the sound of summer around here,” Fenton says. Or at least, I think that’s what he’s saying. Hard to know, when your eardrums are being drilled by the equivalent of a Fender Stratocaster on overdrive.

Wendy Harmer on the back deck of her home in Collaroy. Nothing is equal to the noise directly outside her bedroom.Credit: James Brickwood

The Big Day Out is long gone, but with cicada species called “Razor Grinders”, “Double Drummers”, “Black Princes”, “Red Eyes”, “Bladder” and “Golden Twangers”, you’ve got your summer rock festival right there, in your own backyard.

The “Greengrocers” are out in force this year; one variety is known as the “Masked Devil” (if that’s not a Motorhead track, it should be). In numbers, they can sound as loud as a lawnmower going full bore. Some cicada species have been recorded to emit up to 120dB. That’s almost the pain threshold of the human ear.

There is no escape from the deafening cacophany of the cicada.Credit: Getty Images

Thirty summers ago, I married my surfer husband and moved from inner-city Melbourne to Collaroy on Sydney’s northern beaches. Our house, built in 1914, is perched on an escarpment, backs onto remnant bushland and, from here, we pick up a stunning view of the ocean. On a clear day, we can see from Long Reef in the south to the Central Coast in the north.

I’d imagined being lulled to sleep by the sound of rolling waves breaking on the beach below. On a still night, that’s how it is. The sound travels all the way to the plateau above. It’s a natural amphitheatre, and we’re in about row “B”, mezzanine.

What I hadn’t anticipated was that, in summer, this place can be as noisy as any global metropolis – from the screaming all-night sirens and garbage trucks in the streets of New York, London or Tokyo; to the strident early morning “beeps” and “honks” of tuk- tuks in Colombo or Denpasar – nothing is equal to the cacophony directly outside my bedroom window.

It starts in late autumn with the arrival from New Guinea of the Channel-billed cuckoo. Its call sounds like a cat being strangled. The next blow-in, the koel, flies in from Indonesia. The ascending and descending shriek has been dubbed the “most annoying bird sound in the world”. Both intruders are harassed by an attacking force of feral myna birds. That’s when they’re not tormenting kookaburras which, in summer, like to laugh their heads off as early as 3am.

Lemmy from Motorhead rocking out a Melbourne concert.Credit: Michael Clayton-Jones

The Norfolk Island hibiscus – also known as the “Itchy Bomb Tree” for the irritating fibres it sheds – are planted all over Collaroy. My luck to have a huge one outside my window. In summer, I’m woken at dawn by the ear-splitting racket of a rainbow lorikeet party feasting on its pink flowers. All night, it’s a screeching riot of grey-headed flying foxes.

For a while there, I thought the low “woohm, whoom” I could hear emanated from an electricity substation. It was a family of tawny frogmouths. I hope it was a “tawny” that finally finished off the Peron’s tree frog that was driving me up the bedroom wall last week. Its call has been likened to a “jackhammer crossed with a machine gun”.

Ain’t nature grand? Wouldn’t live anywhere else, but some Sydney summers I reckon a Motorhead gig could be just the spot for a bit of shoosh.

And that’s not mentioning the possums cavorting every night on our deck. That’s a year-round dance-off of broken pot plants, upended chairs and scritching at window screens, demanding to bring the partaay inside. Sigh.

Wendy Harmer is a broadcaster, comedian, author and stage performer.

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