Tamworth

Tamworth is a city in the New England region of New South Wales, Australia. Straddling the Peel River. Tamworth is nationally famous as the "Country Music Capital of Australia", annually hosting the Tamworth Country Music Festival in late January. The city is recognised as the "National Equine Capital of Australia" because of the high volume of equine events held in the city and the construction of the world class Australian Equine and Livestock Events Centre (AELEC). The city additionally is known as the "City of Lights", being the first place in the Southern Hemisphere to utilise electric street lights.

Countrylink trains connect Tamworth to Armidale and Sydney daily. A connecting bus travels along the old branch line to Inverell before each train departure and after each arrival. Peel Street is less than 5 minutes walk downhill from the station.

The main mall along Peel Street can be walked on foot in about twenty minutes. The nice parks between the mall and the Peel River have pedestrian and cycle paths running through them. For anywhere else in the city, a car is definitely recommended.

The Tamworth Country Music Festival is an annual music festival and is a celebration of Australian country music culture and heritage. The festival lasts for two weeks during late January and during this period the city of Tamworth (or 'Tam-vegas' as it has become known by visiting celebrities and journalists) comes alive, with visitors from all across the country and worldwide who come to join in the festivities. The festival has many times been counted among the world's top ten music festivals. In 2007 Forbes rated it as number 8 of the World’s Coolest Music Festivals. The enormous number of visitors during the bash doubles the city's population and brings significant economic benefits to the region. Visitor numbers for the 2007 festival were estimated to be 50,000.

The mass number of visitors means that accommodation throughout the area is consistently booked out for this period up to 12 months in advance, with many visitors camping in caravans and tents by the cities riverside. The festival is the second biggest country music festival in the world. A significant degree of national media coverage is given to the festival with all television networks showing the festival in the news. The commercial television stations Channel Seven, Ten and Nine have all broadcast shows and segments from the festival.