Winton is home to an odd instrument called the Musical Fence… This was a pretty exciting thing to discover. The night I spent sampling the musical fence was really windy, so I spent hours holding the recorder inside my jacket and shielding it from the wind… these sounds eventually became the bassline for the song “Eyes Wide Open.” When I got back from that Outback trip, I wrote the song on the piano in one fairly short sitting… The samples of the Winton Musical Fence suggested themselves immediately for the tone of the track, so they were the first piece of the puzzle to fit.
Gotye, The Making of Eyes Wide Open