Day Four of a Camper Holiday! - The Big Guitar, Life in Wax

Yee-Yah! Monday morning we boot-scooted back to Tamworth to check out the Big Guitar. "Oh yes, my wife has left me, my dog has died, I've crashed; now my truck's on it's side". Yodelee-hee-ee!

The obligatory tourist photo.

Uh, yes. While I don't mind country and western music, I am not a fanatic of nor can I write the lyrics of country music.

Melinda stopped me in my tracks.
I nearly said hello to her wax effigy!

Despite this, our time the big guitar was fascinating. While we got the obligatory photo of us standing in front of this golden miracle of fibreglass, we also had a look through the wax museum. Now, I've never been to a wax museum before, and the first few figures didn't grab me at all. Then the wax model of Melinda Schneider stopped me in my tracks. The creators of this wax model are brilliant. I was convinced that there was a real flesh and blood person standing right there. Maybe everyone feels this way on their first visit to a wax museum, maybe not, but I remain amazed.

Smoky's rifle guitar all-in-one.

I also picked up some Australian history. I learned that Smoky Dawson was nuts: let's face it, who fits a rifle to their guitar? 


According to the write-up in the museum, he grafted a Canadian trapper's rifle to his guitar. No detail was given on if and when it was fired. It has left me wondering whether he did this for convenience - reducing the number of things he had to carry everywhere, or if he was just doing it to show off - possibly being an early mastermind of the press and the free advertising/PR which comes with expressing such eccentricities.


As I mentioned, I don't mind country and western music, and one of the few artists I know is Lee Kernaghan. So with X on my hip, I took the chance for a photo with Lee's wax edition.

Me, X, and Lee