Now the northern NSW town now has two major events on its calendar for next year: Hard on the heels of the world-famous Country Music Festival, it will also host the increasingly-popular SWUG conference.
The 5000-seater Tamworth Regional Entertainment and Conference Centre complex – from which Australia’s annual ‘Golden Guitar’ country music awards are televised – will turn into a more intimate setting for visiting newspaper production staff. Events begin on Friday March 19 with the traditional welcome, and conclude with the SWUG Awards gala presentation – be held in the historic surroundings of Tamworth Town Hall – on the evening of Sunday March 21.
There will be no Monday morning conference sessions as in previous years.
“As you might expect from a town that hosts a major music festival each year, the conference facilities and accommodation at Tamworth are first class,” says SWUG president Bob Lockley. “This will be a great venue for our conference and I would encourage everybody to get in early with their registration and accommodation bookings.
Tamworth is well placed midway between Sydney and Brisbane and has several direct flights each day from both cities.
The host print site this year is the newly-equipped Fairfax Media Regional Print facility which houses a six-tower Goss Community pressline largely relocated (and comprehensively rebuilt) from Wagga Wagga, where SWUG had its conference in 2003. Lockley says the press is installation was the result of a unique project which saw reconditioned units from various sites around Australia combined at the one location.
The flagship publication produced at the site is the ‘Northern Daily Leader’, a six-day-a-week local newspaper with a circulation of more than 13,000 copies.
Conference registration packs as well as details about the annual SWUG Awards will be available by the end of the year. For more information, contact Anita White at Fairfax Media on (02) 4570 4444 or email anita.white@fairfaxmedia.com.au
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