DELIBERATE NOISE POLLUTION

We accept the ambient noise of city-living, and most of us put up with it as being inevitable in this motorised age. There’s no doubt the volume of this noise increases from year to year.

We lived in a reasonably peaceful street in suburban Nudgee, on the northern outskirts of the city of Brisbane, Australia. One early morning, after twenty years of residence in this rather delightful tree-lined neighbourhood, I opened the back door to admit a roar of white sound; a combination of traffic both local and distant, airport take-offs and landings, machinery from nearby industry, local waste-truck pick-up, and from the engines and exhausts of a queue of static cars in our street, all attempting to access the nearby ‘freeway’, also at a standstill.

This noise pollution (and its associated air-pollution) had, over twenty years, insidiously increased from zero to intolerable.

There was another pollution, unnoticed at first. All our outdoor furniture and that under cover, was coated with greasy black dust; the fall-out from the products of exhaust gases mixed with finely-ground tyre rubber. We breath the air which carries such filth.

Time to move, and we did. Out of the city, out to the rural hills of quiet and clean air.

But city life must go on, to the detriment of its inhabitants. There’s no solution. Work is money, and money is living.

There is pollution, though, which is endemic and avoidable. That which assaults our ears and sensibilities either accidentally or deliberately, and the following is a list of culprits.

MOTORCYCLES leave their places of manufacture with in-tact and acceptable exhaust noise-levels.The majority, once sold, are butchered by their new owners in order to produce a horrifying roar which increases with revs. The owners give a spurious reason for this effect: to enable revs to be heard above the noise of nearby motorcycle traffic. Ha. The Musicians’ Dilemma. ‘I can’t hear myself over the drums…..up my volume!’ ‘I can’t hear myself over the bass…..turn up my fold-back’.  Everyone’s sound-level increases, and increases.

The sound of a straight-through exhaust on a motorbike which is overtaking your car at maximum acceleration is quite terrifying and dis-orienting. A hundred such bikes in convoy is a traveling scourge to all road-users and neighbourhoods. Mysteriously, in Queensland, there was a time when ALL motorbikes had to submit to regular police sound-checks. No longer. Why?

The neighbourhood child on an un-licenced, unregistered, un-insured motorbike is a further avoidable outrage. No exhaust baffles of course. The joy (to the child) of emitting a vast roar whilst circling the block, again and again, is a frightful horror to the peaceful residents.

Not that the residents are themselves blameless. List the noise-makers in constant use: lawn-mowers and ride-ons, grass-trimmers, lawn-edgers, chain-saws, and worst of all, leaf-mulchers of all sizes roaring continuously at maximum revs. And the most irritating thing about all these tiny machines is their lack of sound-proofing; surely a simple addition.

A modern three-litre saloon car is almost inaudible, even idling in your driveway. Three litres! The noise of that car on the road is from the radial tyres, not the engine. Old rigid tyres were almost silent, though of course far less safe. How is it possible for that engine to be inaudible, when a tiny mower can be heard blocks away?

My old neighbour usus his big ride-on as transport. He rides, at full revs in first gear, around our house to neighbours, many times a day, and to his mail box, and round his garden, all day. This, in addition to actually cutting grass……….He is stone deaf; has no idea.

Of course it’s all in the ear of the hearer. To each his own, and to each sound its place: a rock-concert is voluntary. I remember our favourite restaurant in an older Brisbane: Lucky’s, in the Valley. A marvellous home-from-home, with great ambience, big Italian food, fast cheerful service. Superb murals covered the walls, Italian opera played  non-stop. A most jovial oasis of free-speech and often song, and laughter and old-fashioned gaiety. Is there still gaiety in the world?

Then, one day (not night), Lucky wasn’t there; his family were running the place. A local crass radio-station was playing loudly through the speakers, sunlight beamed through the street-grimed windows, illuminating the worn furniture and shoddy paint. Even the fine murals seemed demeaned. A miserable street-cafe in a street of roaring traffic. Such a transformation, and all in my perception: except for the music and lighting, all was the same. I had to erase that moment to enjoy future nights of jollity, but the feeling of regret remained.

Such is the delicacy of our perceptions.

So squirm as I may at the tiny hoon on the tiny motorbike, this too will end, and it does, and for a while, the dogs don’t bark, the gardens are silent, the birds hold the air, and the rustling leaves can be heard clearly, gently, softly.