Australian Animal Noises

Like most kids, when mine were younger they would do their great impressions of animal noises. They did all the standard ones like dogs, cats, cows, pigs and sheep, often with actions to accompany them.

One day while I was getting my daughter to go through her full performance the thought came to me that as Australian parents we never get our kids to mimic our own native animals like a koalas, kangaroos or ring tailed possums?

If asked I’m sure most Aussie parents would say that Australian animals don’t make noises (except of course for “Skippy’ the bush kangaroo with her clicking thing).

This probably shows the disconnection most of us have from our land as many of our native animals have a wide assortment of calls. Koalas are actually one of the noisiest animals you can imagine. From the pig like grunts of the males and the baby cries and screams of the females. Kangaroos do make clicking, clucking, coughing and growling noises (as well as banging their feet on the ground), ring tailed possums make a beautiful trilling sound, dingos howl, and emus do a bizarre drumming noise from deep in their chest. Of course brush tailed possums make that psychotic growl that makes you think there is an axe murderer outside your window (or maybe that's just me).

The thing with many of these sounds is they have never been named unlike, woof meow, moo, oink and baa. Cats do of course actually say a lot more than meow. One of mine had a vocabulary of at least twenty different sounds from chirps, mews, rows, hisses, mbop and a special double meow when it wanted to go outside. But meow is pretty good shorthand for a cats call and easy for adults to explain to a child.

I can’t help thinking it would nice if some Aussie kids knew what some Aussie animals sounded like. But I suspect it won’t be happening anytime soon.

Though I do wonder what a fat-tailed false antechinus might sound like?