The Tamworth Country Music Festival is setting a cracking pace in more ways than just in its music – and the heat is being turned up again on Thursday as the festival hots up on a number of fronts.
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Weatherwise, festival fans will get a spike in temperatures again on Thursday and Friday as a summer scorcher kicks in again.
But while Thursday and Friday are forecast to top 38 degrees in the Country Music Capital, there’s some respite ahead for the Tamworth festival’s big final weekend.
The Golden Guitar weekend is likely to be much milder than the music, with maximums in the low 30s.
But before then, festival fans can expect a bit of a sweltering Thursday, and if it hits the top range, then it will be the hottest day of our festival so far.
Wednesday topped 34.5 degrees at 4.30pm, but the expected two-day scorcher will bring a refrain like we had back 10 days ago.
Like Tamworth most years, there’s also a chance of some thunderstorms on Saturday.
Meanwhile, organisers continue to report good numbers for the 44th Tamworth Country Music Festival, with the numbers of Riverside camping sites at 843 at 6am Wednesday.
The numbers of arrivals had been tracking ahead of last year’s results for the past week, but the number on Wednesday morning was exactly the same for the same day in 2015.
Wednesday traditionally has been the hump day of the festival.
According to Tamworth Regional Council Destination Tamworth director John Sommerlad, it is the day when a lot of early festival goers depart – and it marks the start of the arrival of the later fans ahead of the big final weekend. Mr Sommerlad said he expected crowd numbers to build and he predicted this year would see excellent results.
“We would have been expecting that this year would be one of the quieter festivals, if you can call any of them quiet, because Australia Day falls outside the festival dates, but on the strength of what we’ve seen, we could be in for a big finish,” he said.
He said venues were reporting many sell-out shows, including a lot of the council-sponsored ones, and if some of the bigger artist shows weren’t sold out yet, they had very solid numbers.
“And I had one report of a venue having turnover to Friday up some 30 per cent on last year’s numbers, so that’s a great positive.”
About 400 busking acts had officially registered to on Wednesday, according to festival director Barry Harley, but he estimated that equated to some 600 people busking in town.
And numbers have swollen in the past two days, with more than 400 cowboys competing in the Australian Bushmen’s, Campdraft and Rodeo big nationals finals at AELEC.
The organisation has some 4700 members – and plenty of them are in Tamworth to watch some of the best riders aged from eight to in the 50s compete.
The senior rodeo is on over Thursday, Friday and Saturday.