2013-01 A hot, dry Tamworth and Australia Day, then January floods on the East coast
A most enjoyable week or so at the annual Tamworth Country Music festival. What a contrast though of the extremes of weather conditions; on the way there from Brisbane, parts of Australia were very hot dry and windy, causing major damaging bushfires. Arriving in Tamworth (NSW), we were greeted with a 40C maximum temperature on our first day. Some of our sunset sky pictures showed very red, caused to some degree by the fires near Coonabarabran, western boundary entrance to Warrumbungle National Park. After the festival and on the way home, almost cyclonic conditions with strong winds and driving rains that eventually drenched almost 4000km of the east coast of Australia causing serious flood damage. Although we were held up for a while at Cunningham's Gap because of fallen trees, we were somewhat fortunate that we arrived home a day earlier than planned because the next day, our route along the New England and Cunningham highways was closed due to floodwaters and landslide.