Country Music and Ski Fields

While heading for Tamworth we were still yet to decide on a place to stay. Liz spent part of the trip checking locations, prices and facilities. Once again our bug-bear of parks profiteering from children raised its head again, this time with several of the parks in Tamworth. One in particular quoted us $21 a night, but upped it to $41 as soon as they heard we had two kids. As discussed previously it staggers me that places think it reasonable to effectively double their prices when the kids are likely to cost them the sum total of an additional shower each! All the rest of the costs are already being incurred as we don’t use any more power with 4 than we do with 2.

In the end we decided on a place out of Manilla (the Manilla Ski Fields Caravan Park), which while being 70km’s additional drive from Tamworth, sounded interesting and relaxing and was very reasonably priced at $18 a night. We guessed that this pricing was based on the fact that it was a reasonably remote location that attracted few tourists. We stayed for three nights and there only one other passing van that stayed while we were there – and only for one night at that.

As the name suggests the park was right on the edge of a lake (Lake Keepit), which effectively lapped up to the park fence. It turned out we had visited at the right time however as the lake edge could sometimes be up to a couple of hundred metres away.


The park was predominantly occupied by permanent vans – different to a lot of parks however form the perspective that people couldn’t stay onsite permanently, they were only allowed to be used as holiday homes. This meant that the park still maintained a holiday feel with most vans being used as weekenders, predominantly by people with a bent for fishing, but also by a number of people that just enjoyed the peaceful surroundings. For the most part the people we encountered while there (which was several as we were there over a weekend) were very friendly and welcoming.

It was one place where we felt no need to lock anything up and the kids were able to ride their bikes around without any concerns (except for one dog that was there that managed to bite every child riding a bike while it was there (not badly enough to hurt, but certainly enough to badly scare) – with no concern showed by its owner. It turned out that the owner had been spoken to previously and there was an agreement that the dog was only allowed on site if it was chained or otherwise contained, however given that when we spoke to the owner he claimed to have nothing to tie it up with it seems that the park owners have some significant issues ahead with this one.

When we first drove in the surroundings seemed a little bleak (not surprising that we had passed through lush rain forest in mountainous country side that day to get there before finishing in quite flat, unforested farming country. Next morning when we woke up however we were astounded a the beauty and tranquillity of the park, with the sun setting off the lake and trees behind. In the end we didn’t move much on our first day there (bar me wandering into Manilla itself to replenish our food stocks), but just enjoyed the peace, with the kids hooking up with another boy staying there and enjoying spending time with someone more their age.

Manilla itself was a very pleasant looking town. One thing I am realising is that smaller towns with little growth in recent years have managed to preserve their history much better than larger growth centres (like Bunbury). Manilla was one of these where a majority of the central shopping area was made up of older, architecturally interesting, buildings. This was reinforced the next day when we spent the day wandering around Tamworth.

Like Bunbury, much of the original commercial building have been removed to make way for new developments over the years as the City grew. I guess this is the price of ‘progress’ with many of the redevelopments happening prior to the historical value of the original buildings being understood.
Tamworth was another example of a town that just blended into a number of others. The lookout at the top of town was impressive but didn’t have a really ‘wowing’ feature to overlook that would make it memorable. We stopped up there for lunch and I was surprised by how many other people visited it, however the short amount of time most of them spent there once they arrived proved that there wasn’t anything that really held people there.

Avenue behind lookout (with Max - 8 going on 16!)

remnants of lunch

SuperMax

We followed on down to the Big Golden Guitar. this included a Country Music Wax Museum, gift shop and cafe. Liz and I had been talking about what made these sort of businesses work and had arrived on a mixture of an attraction, gift outlet and cafe – which this one covered almost exactly. The only significant downfall was the unattractiveness of the cafe area, especially considering the fact that the cafe doubled as the entry to the rest of the building.

The most surprising element was a wall dedicated almost solely to Sir Donald Bradman within the cafe area. This was unexpected in a facility dedicated to the Australian Country Music scene, but interestingly kept the kids attention for longer than anything else there.

To finish the day off we hunted down a clock tower Harry had picked out when we were atop the lookout. Luckily I saw a post card of it which identified it as the Post Office building and provided its address. Some heritage signage on the street corner highlighted the previous comments regarding the difficulties of maintaining heritage in growth centres, which most of the early buildings in the City Centre now nothing more than footnotes in history.

Following a leisurely pack-up and a few final chats to people who had stayed past the weekend in the park we headed off for Moree, to catch up with a cousin of mine. This included a stop in Narrabri for lunch. The kids were excited that adjoining the park area we stopped in was an actual AFL ground – as opposed to nothing but rugby league and union fields that are obviously the norm in NSW. This resulted in a kick-around on the ground to allow the kids to have shots for a ‘proper’ goal. Max was even more impressed when he found out that the local team was the Narrabri Eagles and the logo was even correct!

we then hunted around to a Telstra shop as my new (only 4 months old) shock-proof, water-resistant, dust-resistant phone refused to work. Luckily, while in there it started working again for no more reason than it stopped in the first place apparently, but not before we had organised a proof of purchase to be faxed through from Total Telephones in Bunbury, transferred everything across to a loan phone and worked out how we were going to get the phone back to us once it was fixed given our uncertain movements. Still, provided it doesn’t do it again I am happy to not have to mess around with getting it fixed and organising to switch phones over again in the future. The store in Narrabri was extremely helpful and accommodating in this as well which made the messing around much more bearable.
On the way out of Narrabri we were therefore able to go about organising somewhere to stay in the Moree area. after a few phone calls Liz called the Visitor Centre to enquire about local showgrounds given our positive history with them so far this trip. This proved once again to be a good option, with the showgrounds being centrally located, reasonably priced and with plenty of room for the kids to run and ride around. Interestingly this was the only showgrounds we have stayed at so far that has anybody else staying there other than Warrnambool.