Terara Country Music Campout postponed

For the past 10 years Owen and Thelma Ison have thrown open their Millbank Road property at Terara for the Campout.

This year's event was scheduled for March 31- April 4 but caravans were due to start arriving at the 21-acre property from this coming weekend.

But the "big wet" that hit the Shoalhaven a couple of weeks ago, followed up by "more than an inch and a half of rain last weekend" has left the property, affectionately known as "Owie's World" just too wet to host the event.

At the height of the flooding, parts of the Ison's property, which at times has housed more 300 caravans for the annual weeklong event, was completely under water.

"It's just too wet," a disappointed Owen Ison said.

"We had travelers coming for all over for the event.

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"The first of the vans were supposed to arrive this weekend - but we pushed that back to mid next week to allow the grounds more time to attempt to dry out.

"But the rain over the weekend was just too much for the already drenched paddocks.

"It's heartbreaking. We were looking forward to another big weekend. We can control lots of things but the weather is not one of them.

"We had nine caravans set to come up from Victoria alone, but that's all off now.

"It's disappointing but there are a lot more people a lot worse off than us."

Mr Ison and family members, who help organise the event, took to Facebook over the weekend to announce the postponement.

"The ground is simply too wet to host the event," Mr Ison said.

"On the most northern paddock, floodwater was about five foot deep, while even the road paddock which is usually home to numerous caravans over the week long event, was well under water.

"We managed to get the higher paddocks at least slashed ready but the extra rain at the weekend was just too much.

"Under the shade shelter is still water and a sloppy mess - at the height we had about two foot of water through that.

"It just hasn't been able to dry out and won't dry in time."

And while he has seen blgger floods across his property he said this one definitely took longer for the water to get away.

Mr Ison is hopeful of maybe rescheduling the campout for October or November this year.

"We have to work with our artists and their availability," he said.

"Our usual late March event has proven to be a problem over the years - we haven't really had a good run - there's always been something - wind, rain, floods.

"As one local farmer said to me you can 'break the drought'."

The 2012 event was actually cancelled, while in 2017 which was also a "wet event", it was too wet in fact to allow caravans on site, but that year still attracted big crowds with Chad Morgan headlining the show.

"Certainly, it's disappointing - we had a great program of acts arranged and it was shaping up to again be a big event," he said.

"Who knows, maybe we do need to look at changing our time next year - we don't want to go into February as that's local shows time and we don't want to impact on them."

He thanked everyone for their "kind thoughts and calls."

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