On the 24th January 2025, John Williamson will return to the big stage at TRECC for what could be the last time. Few have performed at the Festival more than John, having been every year except one.

2025 will mark John’s 55th year in the industry. He will also turn eighty. Twenty-five, fifty-five, eighty. From his humble beginnings as the son of a wheat farmer in the small Victorian Mallee town of Quambatook, what a remarkable career.

He has written and recorded well over 500 songs and has a swag of awards too numerous to list. But let’s try for the top ones. In 2022 John was honoured with a life-sized bronze statue in the main street of Tamworth, NSW. He has twenty-eight Golden Guitars, six ARIA awards, an Order of Australia, inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame and the Australian Roll of Renown. He has sold over five million albums and achieved a hundred million music streams. John has sung at some of the most significant events both in Australia (Steve Irwin’s and Sir Donald Bradman’s memorial) and overseas (the first and tenth Bali Bombing Memorial services in Bali). His stirring rendition of Waltzing Matilda has inspired both the crowds and the Wallabies in Rugby World Cups and Bledisloe Cups.

John is still writing and recording new songs, but don’t miss out on seeing True Blue perform live at Tamworth this January before his ‘Travellin’ Days are Done’. There is no doubt that his contribution to our country’s music and the national psyche will resonate long after the last note has been played.