It was very late and Kipp had fallen asleep in his swag early in the evening. She’d been woken by strange noises and because she didn’t want to wake him, she decided to brave the night and investigate. She put on her boots and wrapped herself in her oversized jacket, grabbed Kipp’s torch and crept through the chasm towards the source of the sound. Even though she had been living in the country since she was five, she could never get used to the sounds of night. The unnatural squeal of a fox, a barn owl hooting its ghostly taunt, the relentless grunting of Koalas, which sounded like wild pigs in the dark and the occasional hissing of Kangaroos. They all sounded so alien at night. She used to lay awake in bed and tell herself she knew what each noise was. But on still nights, the sounds seemed to echo across the paddocks, finding their way through her window and into her fearful heart. “The air is cooler and denser at night,” she remembered someone once telling her. “That’s why everything sounds different.
