TCMF 2019: The Gore Group visit Tamworth YHA every year for festival

Carol Hobden has owned Tamworth’s only youth hostel for more than two decades, about as long as The Gore Group has been coming to Tamworth Country Music Festival from New Zealand.

“It changes the whole feel in the hostel, everyone is happy, everyone’s in festival mode – it’s a good, fun festival,” she said.

“They’re rarely on site, there’s so much happening who wants to stay and party on site?

“They get up, they’re gone all day and half the night and they go to everything.”

During the festival an extra 25 to 30 guests come on board.

In the mornings, guests sit at the long dining room table by the window and discuss frankly the shows they went to the night before.

What was good, what wasn’t and where to go next are all topics on the agenda.

Upstairs, Christchurch residents Pam Webber and Diane Graham have come to Tamworth with The Gore Group for the first time since it started, 21 years earlier.

“It’s so hot, we can’t believe how hot is it,” Ms Graham said.

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“We love it here, we’ve been to Australia lots but this is our first country music festival with The Gore Group.”

The youth hostel is an interesting microcosm of culture, in the kitchen a man from India cooks his lunch while the ladies eat Thai they’ve picked up from down the main street.

Just one block away from all the action, Ms Webber is enjoying the short walk – but still getting used to sharing close quarters with four other women.

“We’re here for the whole 10 days,” she said.

“We really like Australia but it is competitive – I think Australians dislike New Zeleanders more than we dislike Australia.”

Gore is a small, rural city in New Zealand is one of five of Tamworth’s Sister Cities, and holds its own country music festival each year in May.

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