Armidale in northern New South Wales, Australia, is in the heart of the region known as New England. It's a university town, in this case the University of New England. About 25,000 people call Armidale home, and it's an odd mix of students and cockies (Australian slang for farmers), with an extremely pleasant climate and geography.

The town itself is built along both sides of a valley, with a river at the bottom protected by a large park along both banks. Very picturesque! Since the bypass road was completed in the early 1990s, the town's streets, widened to take the fast and furious through traffic of the 70s and 80s, are now simply wide and serene. A true "country town" with all the pleasures of a much larger city.

Apart from the university, one of the more famous things in Armidale is the New England Regional Art Museum which houses the Howard Hinton and Chandler Coventry collections. It's worth visiting just to see this, if you have any interest in art.

Armidale is also reasonably well known as a jumping off point for great bushwalking in the many national parks that surround it, like Cathedral Rock National Park. Waterfall Way, the road that leads from Armidale to Coffs Harbour is seen by many as one of the top ten scenic drives in NSW.

Yes, I do have a personal attachment to the town, I lived there for a year, the first year of junior high.

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