Sing, kunanyi!

This morning it is a child singing.

Hustling through the bus mall past the early morning commuters, Beatrix ignored the song. She was in a hurry and she almost ran straight into the old woman who had stopped, in the middle of the busiest pedestrian crossing in Hobart, to gaze up at the mountain and listen.

The weight of the guitar case on Beatrix’s back nearly toppled her over. She couldn’t get around the woman without stepping into somebody else’s way. The hustling morning crowd split around the women as though they were two stones in a stream. Beatrix resisted the urge to shove the old woman over and continued on her way.

The meeting was supposed to start in twenty minutes. It would take fifteen minutes to walk through the city centre and up to North Hobart, she thought. No need to rush. She would turn up looking cool and composed. Professional. They would like that. Her boots looked amazing, even if they were a bit hard to walk in.

By the time she arrived the pub, the child’s song was over. Now a man was peaking sternly, voice rumbling incoherently over the city, his words lost in the air, a baritone hum unremarkable amongst the white noise of Elizabeth Street. Probably another local. The locals tended to use the Kunanyi Horn as their personal soapbox.

Beatrix was grateful that she couldn’t make out what he was saying. She needed to focus. She took a deep breath, set her shoulders, and went inside.

A pub that’s usually thrumming with people and music and food is a strange place at nine o’clock in the morning. Eerily quiet, the bar seemed to be holding its breath in anticipation of the day to come - the rattle of the kitchen, the hungry hum of the restaurant, the beer-soaked punters and their frantic dancing.

Beatrix understood why the owners needed to meet this early in the day. The place would open for lunch at eleven and then it would be a good twelve hours of madness. She could hear the coffee machine going already, and a moment later Joe appeared from the back bar with two steaming cups in his hands.

“Beatrix!” No matter what time it was, Joe was always fresh. “I thought rock stars slept until lunchtime?”

“Only the lazy ones.” She replied. It was an effort to match his energy.

“Ah. Up and at ‘em. You look like you’re ready to step on stage and it’s what, ten o’clock?”

“No - we had a meeting at nine thirty, remember? It’s a bit after that now.”

“So it is, so it is. Shall we then?” He raised a cup towards the door that led to the back office. “You know the way. Mark’s already here.”

She did know the way. She’s stumbled blind through every part of this pub more times than she could possibly remember. A few of the band posters strewn up and down the corridor walls had her name on them.

Mark didn’t look up when they entered. Beatrix sat her guitar case on the floor as Joe eased past with the coffee.

“Have a seat.” He nodded at the chair opposite the desk and Beatrix sat down, suddenly nervous. She has known the Leary brothers for years and they have solid history - but there’s an air of formality in the room today. Joe put a cup in front of his brother and sipped from his own. There was no coffee for her.

She tried to mask her creeping dismay. “So what’s up? Last weekend went pretty well I thought?”

Joe and Mar k exchanged a glance and Joe sat back. Mark grimaced and looked at his hands.

“I’m gonna get straight to the point, Bee. It’s not working out. Last Friday was ok, we closed just under eight grand… but we need to be doing twelve on a Friday night. Every Friday night.”

“Not just in summer.” Joe add ed.

“We’re getting some good crowds.” Beatrix tried to keep her voice level. Mark was already shaking his head. “Maybe they’re just not drinking enough?”

“It’s been slowing down for the past few weeks, Beatrix. You must have noticed. Having the same act every second Friday night… people just want something new. People are definitely out drinking, the waterfront is killing it. We need to bring ‘em back up here.”

“And you think getting rid of us will do it?” She didn’t bother hiding her feelings this time.

Joe leaned forward, concerned. “That’s not what we’re saying, Bee. We still want you to come and play, just not every second Friday. We need to break it up a bit. Maybe you could play once every six weeks or so.”

“Maybe? I thought the residency was for a year.”

“Look babe.” Mark was the sterner of the two. “You know how it goes. The regulars like you. We like you. You’re part of the family. We’ve just gotta freshen the crowd up. Get their attention again. Look, write some new songs, do what you need to do. Book a date, then get out and plug your stuff. Give people a reason to come and see you. Pull a crowd.”

“Pull a crowd,” she echoed. “Good idea. Great meeting.”

Joe stood up. “Come on Beatrix. I’ll make you a coffee.”

The Kunanyi Horn was quiet between 12 noon and 2pm, which was a welcome relief for Beatrix, and probably the rest of the city too. She could see it from the docks, or most of it at least.

Kunanyi, the mountain formerly known as Mount Wellington, overlooked the city of Hobart and the River Derwent. The Kunanyi Horn was an enormous steel pipe that stretched from the very peak of the mountain all the way down to the suburban foothills far below. The brightly polished alpenhorn, just shy of a kilometre long, was livid against the mountain’s dolomite boulders. The Horn’s bell, a cavernous opening over four stories high, was nestled in a deep valley behind the suburb of South Hobart, well out of sight from where she Beatrix sat on the waterfront.

She liked to come down to the docks when she was depressed. It was always windy near the water and that suited her mood perfectly.

Students from the nearby art school strolled around with bags of cheap chips from the punts. Tourists consulted maps and pointed in meaningless directions. Dock workers trudged past in heavy boots, ignoring anybody who wasn’t wearing hi-vis similar to their own. Beatrix bought a coffee from a hole-in-the-wall cafe and walked over to the bench seats on Hunter Street - near the water but away from the popular punts.

It had been a shitty meeting. She shouldn’t be so surprised. She knew that the gigs hadn’t been going so well. Numbers had dropped and recently punters had even been leaving halfway through the set. Maybe it was time to write some new material. She sighed. There were other pubs in town, but not many offered residencies. The regular income had been a blessing. Now she was back to square one. It wasn’t the first time, by far… but it never got any easier.

Abruptly the Horn started again, another man speaking urgently about the lack of political transparency in Tasmania. The tourists were bad enough, but the locals were usually worse. Beatrix could hear him clearly from Hunter street, as could ev eryone else around the waterfront. He would only get a minute or two, she was sure, but she put her headphones on anyway – listening to her own work usually pulled her out of a funk.

It was hard not to be bitter about the Horn sometimes. For many years Tasmania had been a beer-stained backyard, an oasis of cricket and horse racing. That had all changed, of course. The stainless steel Horn had taken several years to build, then several months to install, and it had been there for a few years now… but the novelty was yet to wear off. It probably never would.

As the largest public art project ever undertaken in Australia, the Kunanyi Horn had promised to complete Hobart’s transformation into a global destination for culture - and it had. People came from far and wide to have their turn on what was essentially the largest musical instrument ever built. They came, they saw, they spent… and they talked. Come for the Horn, stay for everything else.

Suddenly it wasn’t just the cheap local beer that was amongst the best in the world – every week seemed to uncover some bright thing that was somehow better in Tasmania than almost anywhere else. New festivals sprang up in every month and incredibly, most of them prospered. A few loud voices bragged about the gem they had uncovered at the bottom of the world and the trickle became a flood. New hotels were built. The airport was upgraded. Big ticket bands put on shows in small ticket venues. After decades of enduring jokes about second heads and sisters learning to outrun their brothers, being Tasmanian was finally something to brag about.

Beatrix was born and raised in Hobart. She had been playing music in its pubs since she had finished college, almost twenty years ago. She had worked her ass off to get her music out there, to get an audience - and now any douche with a ride could sing, speak or shout to thousands of people after a short wait in a queue. The Council wanted to rebrand Hobart as ‘The City of Whispers’, for fuck’s sake.

She knew the Horn was an amazing thing... but sometimes she wished it was in Launceston. Or that they would at least restrict access to the mouthpieces a bit more.

The Horn had two removable mouthpieces, both mounted on heavy round plates. They lived in a strong black iron chest, handcrafted by Tasmania’s finest welders, in the Pavilion at the summit. The standard mouthpiece, a polished wooden concave around the size of a soup bowl, was made for speaking and singing into. It was the one everybody got to have a turn on.

The other mouthpiece was the one used by the Alphornist. The Alphornist was the recipient of an annual council-funded residency for an internationally recognised musician. Their only task was to blow the Horn on special occasions such as Regatta day, or when Princess Mary came to visit, or when a footballer died. Beatrix had heard the Alphornist’s long, rich notes reverberating through the foothills more than once. It was impressive, there was no doubt.

But the Horn's resonation chambers, which allowed the monumental instrument to carry a human voice for kilometres and beyond, were more impressive. The mouthpieces joined on to a long, curved hollow neck of decorated Huon Pine, which snaked out of the Pavilion and over a large boulder to meet the Horn’s stainless steel body. Inside the Horn, just below where the golden wood met the polished metal, was the first of more than a dozen resonation chambers – long pipes filled with pressurised air and capped on both ends with diaphragm honeycombs that were just waiting to be woken by sound. Each diaphragm in the honeycomb resonated at a particular frequency, agitating the pressurised air below, which in turn agitated the next diaphragm and the next chamber and so on. The chambers got longer and wider and louder as the Horn stretched down the mountain.

The song finished. She wasn’t happy with the mix. It couldn’t go back to Chalky again – he’d taken three shots at mastering the track and it still wasn’t right. Maybe she should pay for the guy in Sydney to have a listen after all. She sighed. Maybe she should just fucking give up.

The wind was picking up in response to her blooming melancholy. She sat above the water, looking down the river, wishing it could carry her away. The Horn was quiet.

Then she noticed something she had never heard before. A low, rich hum. It wasn’t the Horn; the sound was a lot closer, in fact it seemed to be coming from all around her. Not one hum, but many. Dozens. A range of notes, all low, all humming in time with the wind. Some were barely distinguishable, while others groaned for her attention.

There was a momentary shiver down her spine. The wind lifted and the air thrummed, alive with voices.

She wandered along the docks, puzzling over the sound, trying to find the source. It seemed to be coming from some of the boats, from the air above them. When she realised what the sound was, she laughed to herself, embarrassed that she didn’t pick it immediately; the sound was the wind blowing through the yacht’s rigging. Up and down the marina, taut lines vibrated and hummed.

Beatrix shook her head ruefully. In all these years of coming to the docks, of eating and dancing and playing along the nearby waterfront, she had never noticed the sound before. She sat back and felt the wind playing the ropes. The rise and fall of the breeze gave every moment a new tonal variation. Every third or fourth boat seemed to be taking part, adding its voice to the brisk night air, but there was one note that stood out from the rest. It wasn’t the richest note or the most constant but its hum sounded just right to her musician's ears.

She followed the note until she found the boat it was coming from - a sea-beaten schooner that had seen better days... but was clearly still seaworthy. She liked it.

She sat and listened and shivered and thought. The Whispers had been in the City all along.

Then the horn started again and the note was overwhelmed and lost. Gone. A fleeting moment of perfection chased away by another tourist, who was giggling so much she could barely introduce herself. How could anyone discover a whisper when they were constantly being blasted by sound? How could a single voice measure up against a Horn that was as tall as a mountain?

All at once, Beatrix knew what she had to do.

A couple of days later, she called Quiver. They had jammed a few times over the years, had hooked up a couple of times. He was ballsy and strong, with a solid streak of anarchy in his blood. She knew he would be keen on her idea – and he was.

“Hah. Nice one,” he chuckled. “I’ve heard similar ideas before. Only at the pub though.”

“Shit. Really?”

“Of course. But none of them sounded as serious as you do right now.”

“I’m gonna do it.”

“Hah. Really?”

“Well, if I can find a fucking drummer….”

He laughed loudly. Quiver laughed a lot. “I guess it’s only a matter of time until somebody does… something like that. It might as well be us. You know we can’t get caught, right?”

“Yeah. I guess. How bad could it be though?”

“Community service, maybe? I don’t know. Let’s not find out.” A pause. He wasn’t laughing anymore. “This doesn’t seem like your usual kind of gig, Bee.”

“I guess that’s kind of the idea. You should come over, Quiver, so we can figure it out.”

He laughed again. “I’m on my way.”

A couple of weeks later her car slipped and spluttered along Kunanyi’s icy summit road. Driving carefully, hunched over the wheel, she crept to the top of the mountain. Quiver encouraged her with jokes about her Datsun. He was nervous, but she couldn’t tell if it was because of what they were about to do or whether he was just terrified by the way her car was limping its way along the cliffs. As she pulled into the small car park behind the Pavilion, she saw a tour bus driver nudging another bus driver and pointing at her car. Both of them chuckled. Pricks.

Neither Beatrix nor Quiver got out of the car. Despite the wind, the day was clear enough that she could see for miles even from the carpark. It would be dark in a couple of hours, and the tour buses would leave well before then. There were some locals hanging around – there always was – but she hoped they would follow the tourists down the mountain. If there were still a few around when the moon came up… well, they’d be in for a special treat.

For the first time in a long time, she had butterflies in her stomach. This was her moment. She knew that in years to come, this was the time she would look back on – sitting in her car with Quiver, sharing cold pasta salad and practising the beat, waiting for the sun to go down.

She had half-expected him not to turn up this afternoon. He had explained how to set it all up, more than once, but… she was glad to see him. He had jumped into the Datsun and given her an awkward kiss on the cheek. She had smiled, trying to ignore her flip-flopping belly.

“You made it,” she had said. “All the stuff’s in the back.”

“Did you think I would pike?” He had grinned when she was slow to answer.

“I wouldn’t have blamed you if you did.”

“Would you have gone ahead with it anyway?”

She shrugged her shoulders – but she knew she would have done it without him. This was her moment.

A white SUV with the Hobart City Council logo cross-hatched along its side glided into the Summit car park just before six. A man in blue climbed out and bustled into the Pavilion. He emerged a couple of minutes later, got into his car and disappeared back down the mountain. There was no door to lock in the Pavilion – he would have been locking up the mouthpieces for the night. The last straggling sightseers followed him out and down the mountain a little while later, leaving Beatrix and Quiver alone on the summit.

Beatrix and Quiver climbed out of the Datsun. The mountain wind pounded them, not unexpectedly. They walked in to the Summit Pavilion and paused momentarily to take it all in. The Horn itself poked upwards out of the floor, a polished stalagmite that emanated potential. Huge reinforced windows framed it on all sides, allowing for impressive views of Hobart and the River Derwent, all the way down beyond Bruny Island and up to the Midlands. The Pavilion itself was a blend of steel and concrete, simple, functional and sturdy against the weather. There was little decoration – a long padded bench in a minimalist design that looked spectacular but was too awkward to actually sit on, a bronze frieze set into the cement floor that named the features in the distant landscape, and the black wrought iron chest that housed the Horn’s mouthpieces.

"The last song of the Alphorn,” Quiver mused as they gazed out over the city. “What will you do with the recording?"

"I don't know. We might not get anything.”

He laughed. "Oh we’ll get something. There are two H4n recorders just outside the bell. And I set up a video camera on the far side of the park. It doesn’t have a great microphone, but you never know.”

"And the H6?"

He held it up to show her. The highest quality field recorder they could get, the H6 looked like a big remote control with two small microphones sticking out of it. "This will be enough for up here, but to get the big sound from the bell we’re relying on the H4n's - which means we should get started. Their batteries won’t last forever."

"Okay." She swallowed and her throat was so dry it clicked. “Okay.”

Quiver moved quickly. His bolt-cutters made short work of the padlock on the iron chest, and he lifted out the standard mouthpiece and carried it over to the open neck of the Horn. The plate with the mouthpiece slid into place with a solid click, completing the instrument. Beatrix’s stomach flipped. Quiver fiddled with H6 a last time, then sat it on the floor just below the mouthpiece.

“Let’s not forget to grab this before we bolt,” he joked. “All right. I’ll take both axes around with me as well, so when you’re done in here…”

“I know.”

“Are you ready?

She nodded. “I’ll wait for you to count me in.”

He grinned and kissed her on the cheek again. “This is gonna be fucking amazing, Bee.” With that, he strode out of the Pavilion.

For a moment Beatrix had the Horn, the view and the world to herself. Far below, Hobart’s lights were flickering on as dusk settled across the river. The moon was peeking over the Eastern horizon, waiting for the show to start.

She watched as Quiver walked around the Pavilion’s massive windows, carrying two axes towards the Horn’s wooden neck. He laid one of the axes on the ground then turned around and waved to Beatrix through the glass. She waved back, and he nodded and set his feet.

When he pulled the axe back over his shoulder, the world held its breath. Quiver’s dark silhouette was outlined against the lights of the city behind him, his hair flickering around in the breeze – Beatrix had time to wish she had brought a camera – before he bought the axe crashing down, blunt side first.

The blunt axe head sent a small boom down the Horn as the blow reverberated along its length. The sound wasn’t loud – it was like a heavy knock on a distant door – but it was rich. She nodded to herself. This was going to work. She closed her eyes and leaned into the Horn’s mouthpiece.

Quiver swung the axe again, smacking it into the Horn, still using the blunt edge, and then again, establishing the beat. His timing was spot on and after the fourth beat, she opened her eyes and began to sing.

"A simple song…” she sang, and Quiver brought the axe down sending out another loud boom.

“Quiet too long…” the breath poured out of her, down into the Horn and through the sleepy streets.

“Listen my friend…” It felt amazing and sounded good too, straight from her gut.

“This is the end…” Boom went the horn as Quiver hit the beat again, rounding out the song.

She sang the words once more as Quiver kept time with his axe. The sound of it flowed through the chilly night air, her simple soft voice dramatized by the massive reverberation of Quiver’s bass hits. The song rounded off once more – that was it for the lyrics. Now for the double-time beats.

Moving quickly, she ran out of the Pavilion and stepped around the rocks to where Quiver was already swinging his axe again. Another dull boom rattled down the mountain as she picked up her own axe. Quiver nodded to her as she stepped up to the Horn. His beat was solid, with plenty of room for her to join in. She gripped the handle, making sure the blade was pointing down. Quiver hit the Horn once more – then it was her turn.

Her axe hit the Horn’s wooden neck with a huge, splintering sound. The mountain shook. She lifted the blade again. In the pause, Quiver brought his axe down too, blade down now. The Horn boomed again. Beatrix swung her axe, perfectly in time, and the beat continued.

Boom. Boom. Boom. Their axes hit the Horn, again and again. The mountain shuddered, its new heartbeat ringing out across the city. Sweat dripped down Beatrix’s neck, oddly cold in the wind. There was no turning back now.

It was Beatrix’s axe that split the wood first. It cracked open, revealing the darkness inside the wooden chamber. Quiver’s next hit made the split even wider, but his blade caught in the wood. He strained to pull it out, putting his foot against the Horn and heaving with all his might. The axe head came squealing out, but the beat was lost. Beatrix swung the axe with all her might, aiming for the side of the split and hitting it squarely. A wide crack opened across the Horn’s neck, as though the colossal instrument’s throat was slit.

All at once the wind picked up. It barrelled down the mountain, flinging Beatrix’s hair out behind her and buffeting Quiver off balance. The wind swept across the split in the Horn, rushing into and over the chamber.

The resonance chambers, hit with a wind force far beyond what they had been designed to handle, began to thrum loudly.

Beatrix stepped back, lowering her axe. The Horn grew louder as the wind poured in, filling the air with a powerful whistle that quickly grew to a shriek. The gusts became more and more powerful and the Horn grew louder and louder, it’s entire length vibrating with sound. From the top of the mountain, where Beatrix and Quiver were dropping their axes and backing away from the suddenly living instrument, the sounds was almost too loud to bear.

Beatrix watched in wonder, her hands clasped to her ears. The wind was playing the Horn, playing it more beautifully, more loudly, than she had ever dreamed possible. All thoughts of destroying the monument were gone. The wind gusted, faster and faster.

Down in the valleys below, entire suburbs suddenly woke screaming. Almost as one, thousands of people kicked awake, clutching at the searing pain in their heads, wondering with growing fear at the alien silence of the world around them. Children called for parents who couldn't hear them and would never hear them again. Panic spilled onto the Crescents and Courts and Boulevards as people stumbled out of their homes, searching for help or reason, their eardrums shattered.

Eventually, most of them turned and looked towards the mountain’s summit.

She was probably imagining it, but for a moment Beatrix thought she saw people gathering in the streets below. There were definitely more lights on now. Could they really be coming out to listen?

Beatrix felt amazing. She had never dreamed it could go so well. Instead of destroying the Horn, she had created something from it, something even more important, more monumental. The wind’s song filled the air with power that reached far and wide. Even from here, she could see the sound waves pushing across the surface of the River Derwent.

Quiver was suddenly at her shoulder. She put her arms around him and held him close, fighting back tears of joy. Whether the recording worked or not, her song had been heard far and wide. Her time had come, and things would never be the same again.