Solitary Soundwalks ‘Wilson Reserve’ (2023)

First tested in ‘Wilson Reserve’ in 2018 as a part of Banyule Council’s ‘Art in Public Places’ temporary public art program, Solitary Soundwalks ‘Wilson Reserve’, was initially published as a small pamphlet. This was revised and then republished as a 41 page guide book in 2023, again presented in ‘Wilson Reserve’ for a select audience. Conceived as the first in a potential series of guided soundwalk pamphlets or pocket books, this particular guide takes a solitary audience member around the main looping River track within ‘Wilson Reserve’ specifically. There are six additional detours the audience member can explore, most of which become increasingly difficult in terrain and darker in tone as you progress.

Taking on the appearance of many pocket walking guides, Solitary Soundwalks ‘Wilson Reserve’ presents itself as a somewhat standard, albeit strange and pedantic, guidebook. It introduces you to the way the walk works, how the guide works, the conditions upon which your walk depends. It gives you a brief but detailed background to the Reserve itself. The whole soundwalk begins and ends on a bench overlooking ‘Bailey’ Billabong. It then takes you on a walk – between 25 and 90 minutes long (or longer) depending on your abilities and preferences – on the circular track through the Reserve. Along the way there are detours. In the detours things begin to get stranger. The experience of the walk ebbs and flows between one of calm shirin yoku, or forest bathing, to one of an on-edge mission in observation. The further you go along the main path, the stranger and even more abstract the detours become. The text throughout the guide speaks to sounds heard in real time, those imagined, those of the past, and those of past visitors. The text carries ghosts into your experience of this place, one full of its own history, geography, and politics; the echoes of which heighten what might have been simply a calm or peaceful soundwalk experience otherwise.

This work is available to purchase here.