Driving the Newell Highway I have found a selection of great food places; Coonabarabran and The Green Frog are two that come to mind that are quite inexpensive. Down the New England Highway and the Putty Road there are some more; some cater to truckies but are quite unpretentious and the food's OK, so long as you're not vegetarian, let alone vegan. Along the back roads from Tamworth to Yass via Dungog there's several great shops. Wodonga has a great bread shop that does beaut lunches.

Thankfully, my kids have no interest in McDonalds, or even in Coca Cola but some of the comments above reminded me of the first Kentucky Fried Chicken on the Hume Highway, north of Melbourne and many years ago. They sold nothing but bits of chook, according to the menu (plus chips, of course), but they bought an awful lot of rabbits from the locals. Perhaps there's some connection to why they're now called "KFC".

In the US, the only highway food outlet I found at all interesting was "Po' Folks" and I gather they were only ever in the south east.

Cheers, Rowan