Friday marks the start of the run into the long weekend but also what’s usually referred to as the biggest three days of the 10-day street party.

Council’s festival manager Barry Harley told the Leader organisers are crunching the numbers but some things are up and some things are down, depending on who you talk too.

”Everything we needed to do we've done now, we created an environment for everyone to work in, hopefully those stakeholders are receiving rewards for their efforts and achieving what they wanted to in festival,” he said.

“We’ve had some good reports in, some reports, similar to this year, some venues are recording better tickets sales, some smaller venues reporting less ticket sales.

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“We’ve got the long weekend to come and those numbers will build on from today and pump on into Sunday because of the long weekend.”

While the numbers are not concrete, they’re on par with this time last year with about 1300 sites which translates to about 4-to-5000 people in the campgrounds.

“I certainly don’t think we’re bigger, but we’re trying to make it better than previous years,” Mr Harley said.

“We are a bit contained with accommodation, you know camping and temporary campgrounds … this sort of weather you might be a reluctant to camp in 40 degrees.”

The numbers are expected to swell for the long weekend which is tipped to be a “biggie”, and festival-goers found an array of ways to beat the heat on Thursday. 

The Northern Daily Leader stumbled across a handful of campers jumping in a bit of water while plenty were happy to find a nice bit of shade during the 2019 Tamworth Country Music Festival.

The weather – which saw Tamworth reach the mid-high 30s – didn’t deter punters, though.

They still made their way around the festival taking in all the great music.