Tamworth - Australia Information

Tamworth - Australia

THE long drive to Tamworth for the country music festival in January is packed full of interesting stops for the traveller prepared to take a little extra time to get there.
Ute on a pole in the 'Ute Capital of the World', Deniliquin, NSW / Barry O'Brien My wife Pat and I discovered that, like Jason's mythical journey to the Golden Fleece, there are "sirens" lurking in almost every town along the way – all of them good. From Adelaide, we turned off at Tailem Bend and made our way along Ouyen Highway, encountering only three vehicles heading in the same direction on the quiet road to Deniliquin.
BEAUT UTES
DUBBED the Ute Capital of the World, Deniliquin is the home of the "Deni World Record Ute Muster" every October long weekend, when about 3500 utes from all over Australia converge for their owners to compare, boast and show off the great Australian workhorses. The town's popular meeting place is at the foot of a 6m Holden ute monument. This is one of the fi rst towns on the stock route known as the Long Paddock, a "mile-wide" strip of land stretching from Moama/Echuca in the south to Bourke in the north. In dry times, drovers take to the route with large mobs of sheep and cattle belonging to local landholders. At the moment, parts of New South Wales are in severe drought. Deniliquin has had only about 50mm of rain since January while a little further north, Hay has almost missed out entirely.
We caught up with Graham Mansell, 66, and his mob of 700 cattle. A drover most of his life, nowadays he only gets called on when things are grim. By law, he is required to move the mob at least 5km a day to prevent overstocking. We saw nothing of the Headless Horseman who, legend says, roams the Black Swamp near Boorooban halfway between Deni and Hay.
SHEEP'S BACK
OUR first overnight stop was in Hay, the centre of a vast plain that is some of the fl attest country on earth. Nestled on the banks of Murrumbidgee River, Hay is at the junction of the Sturt, Mid Western and Cobb Highways. It is legendary sheep country and appropriately, Shear Outback houses the Shearer's Hall of Fame. The interpretive centre has interactive exhibits and traces the history of shearing, while the shearing shed displays the shearer's skills, the role of the dogs, the shed hands and the opportunity to feel and grade freshly shorn fleece.
There have been six inductees so far into the Shearer's Hall of Fame. First was legendary blade shearer Jackie Howe, said to have hands the size of small tennis racquets, who shore 321 sheep in seven hours 40 minutes in 1892 – a record that still stands. (As is pointed out, the sheep were a lot smaller back then and fleece sizes have increased dramatically). John Hutchison OAM from Victor Harbor was last year's inductee.
HIGHWAY ROBBERY
ON the way to our next overnight stop, Parkes, we paused at Forbes and learned of the deeds of bushranger Ben Hall in – of all things – the Bushrangers Hall of Fame in the Albion Hotel. We saw the network of cellars and tunnels used to carry gold to the Cobb and Co coaches and avoid Hall's intervention. But it is also said Hall planned daring robberies from these same cellars after he took over the Johnnie Gilbert gang.
PARKES IS KING
THE world knows the gold rush town of Parkes for its giant telescope, the subject of a worldwide movie hit The Dish.
The film covered the telescope's role in the Apollo 11 mission, recording Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon, and visitors to the telescope have tripled since the film's release. But Parkes has another claim to fame. In January each year, it hosts Australia's largest Elvis Revival Festival.
"We're finding that more and more visitors to Tamworth are leaving a bit earlier and coming to the festival," the town's tourism officer Kelly Atkinson said.
"Last year we had about 40 hip-swivelling Elvises as well as many Priscillas and Lisa-Maries. This year we're hoping to top 50. It's a fun time with lots of Elvis features all weekend and prizes for the best soundalike, move-alike and look-alike and a section for Junior Elvis." On Saturday morning a street parade of Elvises makes its way down the main street. Elvis fever runs high in the town all year. Gold-rimmed Elvis sunglasses are available from the tourist centre as well as caps and Tshirts.
The local convention centre is named Gracelands.
Dedicated fan Steve Lennox makes Elvis costumes for himself and others and has an Elvis memorabilia collection that he opens to the public at festival time. He even changed his name by deed poll to – you guessed it – Elvis. Ian Harris, who hosts a gospel service at the festival, trravels Australia doing a ghost of Elvis show.
ZOO'S NO SNOOZE
WESTERN Plains zoo at Dubbo has always conjured up visions, for us, of dry treeless paddocks. Far from it.
A 6km drive around the 360ha well-grassed, well-treed zoo allows animal viewing uninterrupted by fences without leaving the car. Much more fun is to walk or hire a bike and leisurely travel between leafy enclosures, protected by unseen moats and ditches. We took a rhinoceros tour and learned the name white rhino was probably a bastardisation of wide, as in wide mouth for picking up from the ground, while the black rhino as a contrast has a pointy mouth for picking foliage from trees.
But the animal that fascinated us was the male indian rhino, severely endangered and the only one of its kind in Australia.
The bargain of all time, he was obtained from a Japanese zoo for the princely swap of two male koalas. With his horn removed because of infection, the four-year-old was positively prehistoric looking, with a hide like armour plating and folds of neck skin.
But the the youngster was incredibly tame and inquisitive as members of the tour party fed him.
Accommodation is available in luxury tents and a lodge-style common room is within a lion's roar of the wild animals. At Dubbo jail we heard the story of the executioner "Nosey" Bob Howe.
A handsome man in his youth, Nosey had his nose "kicked clean off his face" by his horse. His looks made him unemployable, except for that of the hangman, where his customers didn't really care what he looked like.
WITHIN COOEE
TUNING to the tourist radio station, 88.0 FM, we learnt of a little gem in Gilgandra: The Cooee March Museum.
The new, rammed-earth heritage centre houses a display recalling that in 1915, 35 local lads decided to march more than 500km to Sydney to join the war effort.
Marchers followed the teetotal lead of King George 5th who pledged not to drink alcohol until the war ended.
By the time the marchers reached Sydney, another 230 had joined in and thousands greeted them in the streets of the harbour city. The drive from Gilgandra through Coonabarabran and the Warrumbungle National Park to Tamworth was ever-changing with long straight stretches and some spectacular scenery.
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THE LOWDOWN
Getting there: Check the car, check the map and head down the highway.
Accommodation: RAA has accommodation guides, ph8202 6400 or website www.raa.net
DETAILS: Tourism NSW is on 132077 or www.visitnsw.com.au

Sunday Mail (SA)

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