Tamworth’s Carter Street campgrounds have received their first influx of country music campers putting down stakes for the Country Music Festival, with over 750 places already booked for caravans and tents.
Tamworth Regional Events Officer Melanie Jenkins is expecting double that number again, as more arrivals bookings trickle in, as well as those campers who’ll turn up at the gates.
“Last year we had 1800 campsites over the full festival,” Jenkins said, “I’m expecting at least 1500 campsites this year – we’ll get close to last year.”
Preparing the grounds takes a full year, Jenkins said, and money obtained from site fees goes towards maintaining the Riverside Sporting Grounds on Carter that host the majority of campers.
“You can jump on tcmf.com.au and, under accommodation, book a camping site,” Jenkins said.
Prices are based on the duration of stay – whether campers wish to settle in now during the Countdown to Country before the Festival kicks next Friday, to just the festival, to just the final weekend, starting from $100.
The affordability and accessibility during a cost-of-living crisis has been key to the festival’s success, and even growth, at a time when the music festivals are shutting down all over the country.
“It’s very affordable to come here,” Tamworth Regional Council Mayor Russell Webb said, “It’s something we try to do to promote the festival.
“To come down here and pay three hundred odd bucks for a site for the whole 19 days – it’s very affordable.”
Last year’s festival was “one of the biggest in recent memory”, bucking the trend for declining festival attendances, with Webb emphasising that the Country Music Festival is an event held by the whole town.
“We’re not a gated festival where you pay a heap of dough to go in and do what you do.”
“We’re a community festival, driven by the community.”
That community extends to outside the Tamworth area, with out-of-towner Tracey Maxwell running the Riverside Stage – one of the festival’s most prominent free music venues – at the Carter Street campgrounds, as well as the canteen on site, and who has been making the run up from the Central Coast for the festival for the last ten years.
“We were coming up as campers and punters anyway,” Maxwell says, “and I saw there was an opportunity to have a venue where up-and-coming artists could have a place to perform.”
“We’re passionate about country music,” Maxwell said, “I used to perform myself, and busk in Peel Street with my daughter, years ago.”
Crucially, it allows Maxwell to catch up with her “family”.
“We have what we call our ‘Tamworth Family’: people we only see once a year at Tamworth, but we’ve seen them every year for a decade – or two decades, or three.”
“And that’s what it’s all about.”
For more information on the Tamworth Country Music Festival, check out the festival website at www.tcmf.com.au.
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