Tamworth to Kempsey

Travel to TRECC, 6 kilometres from the city centre on the New England Highway, where the Golden Guitar Awards have been held for more than twenty years.

Also here is the Australasian Roll of Renown. Australia’s Elvis, Slim Dusty, was inducted in 1979. An Australian cultural icon, Slim is one of the country music's most awarded musicians, with a career spanning seven decades. His wife Joy (with her sisters) was a country star in her own right and actually penned many of Slim’s hits.

Lasso the Tamworth Regional Gallery. The Gallery’s two main exhibition spaces host a vibrant program of touring exhibitions of national significance, alongside curated exhibitions of regional artists.

The boot-scootin’ Australian Country Music Hall of Fame houses a miscellany of country music tropes, including the Smoky Dawson Armchair.

Smoky was an all-singing rodeo and folk performer and radio star who could split an apple with a whip and throw a two-kilogram axe with pinpoint accuracy.

However, his magnum opus is his patented armchair which mechanically tips you up and out of your seat like a surly night-club bouncer. (Note the speed dial on the arm to control your ascent.)

You’re on a C&W Road Trip dining in a restaurant owned by a Tamworth cattle baron in a tall hat, so consider the award-winning Jack’s Creek Beef marbled Wagyu rump cap cooked on the wood-fired grill.

Like all open kitchens these days, the chefs are on display like lab assistants at CSIRO. But the gang at Workshop Kitchen has been grilling steaks since 1986 (now that is well-done). They have elevated the steak to a brilliant art form.

Having just tasted the best steak in your life, Powerhouse Tamworth is where to hitch your wagon for the night.

Fresh from a refurb, this historic property (family owned and operated) behoves you to stay in Tamworth, with 81 new 5-star suites & apartments and 24 hour room-service. The suites are stylishly kitted out, with funky vintage radios in each.

Day 2: Drive to Nundle 

47 MINS | 58 KMS

Renowned for its quirky festivals, Nundle is a historic mining village that sits on the Peel River. It has a colourful Chinese and colonial past when gold was found in ‘them thar’ hills in 1850.

Stop for a stickybeak at the Chaffey Dam along the way to Nundle. The lookout is on the main road. Easy.

The historic Peel Inn pub was won in a poker game by John Schofield a century ago. How C&W is that?

It remains in the Schofield family today. The food is excellent. The chef is Indian so consider the delicious Rogan Josh or Tandoori Burger.

Out in the beer-garden, you’ll feel you’re in Tuscany beneath the canopy of twisting vines with carolling birds overhead.

Leave Nundle to visit Hanging Rock (9 mins). But consider going back to Tamworth to retrace the Oxley Highway to South West Rocks. Google Maps indifferently sends you via Forest Way.

Here you’ll rattle your kidneys along a dirt logging-road full of potholes, with long trucks tearing around hairpin bends, leaving you sitting in a cloud of dust, shaking. Take a pair of pliers to extract your fingernails from the steering-wheel.

When you arrive at Walcha, stretch your legs and buy petrol. It’s a false economy not to buy petrol in country towns just because it's 15c a litre more.

Arrive at Gingers Creek for fuel. Find it’s closed. Drag the owner Gary in his socks and sandals, from his Smoky Dawson Recliner to sell you petrol as you are on your knees pleading.

Gingers Creek is a popular pitstop for motorcyclists who love the winding roads (hence the roadside memorials).

The beauty of South West Rocks takes your breath away. It’s the topography that impresses. You could be in Samoa or Tonga.

Here, you’ll absorb a lingering twilight on a pretty beach with overpriced fish and chips that you’ve waited 45 minutes for.

Snug in your luxury cabin, the beachside NRMA Resort South West Rocks is enclosed by tropical bush with a soundtrack of pealing birds and nosy kangaroos looking for food.

If you are taking kids with you, the resort feels like an old-school Butlins Holiday Camp, with entertainment for the entire family and endless activities for the little ones.

Families adore it, with dad’s grilling steaks in loud aprons and children with toothy smiles silently orbiting the resort on electric scooters.

Arrive at the heritage-listed village of Bellbrook in less than an hour from the Slim Dusty Centre.

Named in 1882 after the bellbirds you hear tinkling through the dense scrub along Nulla Nulla Creek, up the road is Slim’s home.

It’s not open to the public but there’s an interactive display where Slim chats about the house. Why doesn’t the nation buy the homestead? Surely, it’s Australia’s Graceland.

From Slim’s digs, wind through lush green countryside, with spectacular river and mountain views, to arrive at The Pub With No Beer (1903).

A song originally crooned by legendary country music singer-songwriter Gordon Parsons, Slim heard Parsons singing it at the Taylors Arm Hotel in 1956. Slim’s narrative recounts the adventures of drinkers at this old and isolated timber-getters’ watering hole in the 1940s. 

Slim’s version was the first Australian song to reach No.1 in the British pop charts, selling over five million copies. The pub’s walls are chockers with bush history and Slim memorabilia. 

This C&W Road Trip is beef-orientated. So consider one of the pub’s succulent steaks. The publican Rob is the local butcher, so the beef is outstanding and sliced daily. If you’re over steaks by now, try the pub’s renowned homemade pies or pizzas,

After a meal, you're ready to visit the town’s Old Talarm Church, built in 1928. The church holds one of the Southern Hemisphere's largest beer can collections!