The first weekend of the 2018 Tamworth Country Music Festival gets under way tomorrow, but some keen visitors have been here for weeks. GENEVIEVE SMITH pays a visit to the happy campers, while CAROLYN MILLET looks behind the scenes.
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Even if it’s hot and there’s not a lot happening when they arrive, you just can’t keep some die-hard campers away from grabbing their spot nice and early before the Tamworth Country Music Festival.
Hundreds of people have flocked to the campgrounds of Tamworth to get the best spot for the 10-day festival that makes the city a party town.
And some have been here since, well, 2017 – just before Christmas.
To year-round Tamworth residents who have the summertime comforts of airconditioning, backyard pools and a fan on at bedtime, it may seem a little masochistic.
But festival camping is an enduring tradition around which hundreds of people plan their entire calendar.
When The Leader visits Riverside Camping Grounds this week, it is buzzing with people setting up tents and caravans, relaxing in the shade and taking strolls around the area.
Some returning campers have arrived early to grab the same spots as last time, and “latecomers” have taken advantage of the remaining shade along the Peel River to park their caravans.
They are all geared up for the hot weather, with cool-down ideas and equipment at the ready.
One camper has temporary insulation over her caravan, and a bunch of great ideas in her head.
“My innovative husband has built an insulation tarp over the top of our camper trailer,” she says.
“We’ve also got a fan that works off battery.
“We noticed there is a swimming pool not far, only a couple of hundred metres up the road, and we have googled a few swimming holes around the area.
“So if it all gets too much out in the music and the crowds, we will duck off and go for a quick dip.”
From little things
There are more than a dozen options for camping and caravanning, including caravan parks, sports grounds and even schools, where “classroom camping” is available.
Tamworth Regional Council country music manager Barry Harley says the best-known temporary campsite, Riverside, grew out of necessity.
“My understanding is that in the early days where that was officially a no-camping site, the number of casual and free campers was forever growing, rangers were forever coming to grief with them ... and the information they received was that the caravan parks were all full and there was nowhere else to go.
“In the early days, sporting clubs were approached to see if they were interested in looking after them, because in some cases they actually had facilities like showers and toilets.
“It probably started as embryonic and got too big – too big a risk, too big an ask – and council became involved.”
It now handles the infrastructure and service requirements, such as grounds maintenance, additional showers and toilets, and rubbish and human waste removal.
The sporting clubs associated with the fields along Carter St, Solander Dr and the streets in between provide volunteers to operate boom gates, conduct ticketing, collect fees and so on.
“They are paid for their services based on a formula that tries to equal out to the responsibilities,” Barry says.
“If a club puts in three times more volunteers than another club, then they’d basically get three times more of the payment.
“To that end, in 2017, nearly $60,000 was able to be passed on to the sporting clubs concerned, which represented in some cases their largest fundraiser of the year.”
The heat is on
Every January in Tamworth, it gets crazy hot – and this year is no exception.
Visitors and residents will experience scorching heatwaves across the opening week of the festival.
The Bureau of Meteorology is expecting tops of 41 degrees for the weekend, with a possible thunderstorm on Tuesday afternoon.
Harriet Kelly and Jorga Dalton, from Hillston, NSW, have some tried-and-true tips employed by many festival campers.
“Fans, like the little 12-volt fans … we have a little pool over there,” Harriet says.
“It’s a blow-up pool,” Jorga explains.
However, for some visitors, the climate is nothing new to them.
Graeme is confident he and his wife will be fine: “We will cope – I used to live in a place called Kandos, NSW (near Mudgee),” he says.
“It’s pretty hot out there, too.”
Other campers The Leader speaks to are planning to hit the pub to escape the heat, still others their nearest pool.
Around the grounds
Sports grounds across the city also sprout temporary campsites at this time of year.
Pirates Rugby Club volunteer Tammy Bannister said the club had been offering festival camping for at least 15 years.
With about 55 powered sites, plus unpowered sites and camping spots, she and her back-up volunteers are kept busy.
The “big influx” of visitors usually starts the day before, and the first day of, the festival.
“Including the ones that only come for a weekend, we probably have in excess of 80 to 90 bookings,” Tammy says.
She says this helps pay for costs such as grounds maintenance, new jerseys, and other club supplies.
“It certainly is a good injection to start the year off before the season starts,” she says.
“Outside of the bar takings, I would imagine it would be our biggest fundraiser of the year – at least one of the top three fundraisers.”
In return, she says, the spot is “what we think is one of the best locations”: in West Tamworth, next door, or almost, to a supermarket, a few venues, bus stops and a pool.
Wherever the spot, however hot, festival camping in and around Tamworth is a popular option, here to stay.
