Golden Guitars

21 September – Sunday

The promised thunderstorm arrived just after 10.00pm last night and while we didn’t get any rain, the light and sound show was quite spectacular for over an hour. More thunderstorms are forecast for tonight and tomorrow night.

We only had a short drive to Tamworth today, but did manage to stretch it out a bit with a stop at Bendemeer, the Grey Fergie Capital of Australia. This village of 250 people is holding a Grey Fergie Muster next year – just the place for a grey Fergie owning couple with a campervan to visit! There was also a very nice trout stream flowing through the town.

The Paradise Caravan Park at Tamworth doesn’t look much like the photos in their brochure and the dry and dusty sites are probably the result of the drought and water restrictions. It is a small park, the sites are a bit shallow, but otherwise is good.

Next door to the caravan park is the information centre, which we discovered later, is built in the shape of a guitar. They had a very good display on the history of Australian country music and a very friendly and helpful volunteer who loaded us up with brochures and told us how we could fill in our time in Tamworth.

First stop was the brand new Australian Equine and Livestock Event Centre which was having an open day so that the people of Tamworth could see how their $30 million was spent. The indoor arena was as big as Calgary, but only had about a quarter of the seating. The complex was very impressive and will be worth seeing in a few years. There were 478 stables in six large buildings, an indoor selling arena, outdoor campdraft area, warm-up arenas and plenty of camping space.

After this was the big excitement of the day – seeing the Golden Guitar and visiting the associated gift shop (a bit tongue in cheek here!).

Very hot again today.