A sweet ride

In the aftermath of the Black Summer fires, friends Erin Boutros and Eleanor Baillieu started an Instagram account to remind their friends and followers to visit affected areas and shop local in the hope of helping communities recover. They called it @emptyesky, and a grassroots food and tourism movement was born. The idea of grabbing an empty esky and filling it with produce and products from Nowra to Kangaroo Island to Gippsland quickly caught on, with organised tours by the likes of AAT Kings making it even easier to get involved. Then the pandemic struck and the movement was forced into iso like everyone else. But with regions and borders now open, and with a lot of recovery still to be done, charting one of Empty Esky’s self-drive itineraries is the ultimate altruistic adventure. May we suggest the four-day Best Regional Donut drive, starting in Melbourne and tracking along the coast through Morwell (Powerhouse Donuts) and Lakes Entrance (Big Bear Donuts), onto Bermagui (Eastwood’s), Berry (The Famous Berry Donut Van – an Australian Traveller favourite) and the Central Coast (Daily Dough Co) in NSW, and finishing off in Buderim (Dough Ho) on the Queensland Sunshine Coast. Local communities and your taste buds will thank you (if not your waistline). DISTANCE: 2075 kilometres.

STAY: There’s nothing more satisfying on a long drive than pulling into a roadside motel, and all the better if it has classic mid-20th century bones and a seriously modern refit. Case in point: The Berry View, with its signature 1950s long-slung style now enhanced by joyful shots of orange and a classic Palm Springs-esque aesthetic.