Tamworth is a nice town.
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And I don't just mean it looks nice, though the view from the Oxley Lookout is amazing!
But what I'm really talking about are the people, the attitude, the vibes.
Folks here are willing to give a leg up to a total stranger with no expectation of a reward or recompense.
Speaking of strangers, allow me to introduce myself.
Howdy! I'm Jonathan, the new journo at The Leader.
I've flown over 8000 miles (13,000km) from Cedar Park, Texas just to tell y'all just how bloody beautiful your town is, especially during the country music festival.
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Flash back to the day before the festival started: it's scorching hot out, but Peel Street is cool in the shade (wish we had some more of that that in Texas to be honest).
Buskers were already out, folks were setting up tents, and the buzz was electrifying.
People were out and about wearing big smiles, ready to welcome in enough strangers to nearly double the city's population!
And it's that, that THING, that excitement that's impossible to describe without being there to experience it, that is by far my biggest impression of the Tamworth Country Music Festival.
You ever get homesick seeing something that reminds you of where you grew up?
Imagine being surrounded by so many of those things that you feel like you never left.
Between the incredible fireworks display on opening night and Americana In the Park sometimes I feel like I haven't left Texas!
The buskers are especially nostalgic for me, one of my earliest memories was my parents taking me to Austin and watching fingers FLY over a keyboard.
Some of the buskers in Tamworth are diamonds in the rough, while others are just... well, rough, but that's okay!
This is what dreams are made of, after all. They just need a bit more practice.
Music is a universal language, country music even more so with its themes of working hard, living simply, and the world's only other universal language: love.
In a way, Tamworth embodies those values far better than my hometown of Cedar Park ever could.
In Texas, it's business business business, but here, people care for each other. There's a vibrant sense of community that we don't get even during music events like Austin City Limits or South by Southwest.
In this wild western (eastern?) frontier, I'm still unsure of where exactly I fit in, but with the welcome I've received, I'm sure I can find a place for myself in this here country town.
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