Quite rightly, we are all (except those confined to their own driveway, hotel, lavish country estate or private yacht/jet) being encouraged to take driving holidays into acceptable parts of rural and regional Australia and spray around as much cash as we've been hiding under the bed or in the hole in the garden under the petunias.
The team here at The Weekend Australian multimedia empire doesn't want to put you off but in the interests of a fair and balanced alternative we thought we'd give you our memories of some of this great country's outback icons.
**The Dog on the Tuckerbox**
The Dog on the Tuckerbox (Tupperware food container for our Greek and other foreign readers) is a beautiful life-size statue of a dog sitting on a food container five miles from Gundagai (as the song goes) that almost brings to life the canine hero of the 1880s poem by Bowyang Yorke.
Readers, this is a place you have to put on your bucket list. The cafe serves hot, cold and lukewarm refreshments, souvenirs, Australiana, antiques and old wares like your correspondent and his co-driver, Michael McMichael. It has a peaceful picnic area with the graves of many deceased dogs on the tucker box.
**An oasis in the bush**
Next on the list is the town of Thargomindah on the Bulloo River in Queensland. Well, really the drive from Thargomindah to Cobar via Bourke, or 1046km of tarmac terror.
Yes, friends and others, the mighty Michael McMichael and co-driver daughter Libby McMichael's BMW 7 Series died on our Shitbox Rally years ago by a remote billabong outside the back of Bourke. There was no sign of the disaster to come when 200 of what may be called cars in the world's cheapest wrecking yards in northern China left flood-torn Thargomindah for a new flood-free destination.
**Rock-a-Bye in Roxby**
We were 300km out of Silverton on our way to Marree, on a leg of the 2015 Shitbox Rally, when our ute was attacked by what the locals call the devil's culvert, putting a hole in the sump a small child and his Labrador could crawl through. Oil dumped on to the ground, the oil pressure warning light telegraphed disaster and the engine smelled like it was on fire — because it was.
My quick thinking saved the day. Believing the ute was about to explode, I turned off the engine and ran screaming into the bush, leaving my co-driver to handle the fire and impending explosion.