So from next month Dubbo drivers will be able to use their phones for proof of identity for roadside police checks and age checks for pubs and clubs.

When our plastic licences are replaced digitally in 2019, there’s concern what could happen if a copper pulls us up and our phone battery is dead.

Would we cop a bluey for failing to produce our licence?

No, says Service NSW. The new scheme will be able to verify if we hold a valid licence when the phone battery is flat.

So there you go. If there’s any problems, let the Dubbo drivers find them now.

WHO remembers the infamous Byng Bunyip?

Mostly grey, with two big red eyes, long hair and a bushy tail, the bunyip first appeared in the 1960s near an old cemetery at Byng after being caught in the glare of the headlights of a car driven by one of the local cockies.

Residents searched the cemetery the next day and found huge footprints and flattened grass where something appeared to have been sleeping, but the scary creature was nowhere to be found.

Later three Sydney men saw the bunyip on the Byng Road.

The Aussie cousin to North America’s Big Foot hopped around on its hind legs a couple of times and then ran off into thick scrub and disappeared.

2GZ radio station broadcast an appeal for volunteers with spotlights to help look for it but search parties of up to 40 people with rifles failed to find any trace.

But now it seems its fame has spread much wider with a racehorse named The Byng Bunyip owned by a Mrs H Z Beeton.

The bay mare had 21 starts for one win, three seconds and two thirds, collecting $11,450 in prizemoney on Tasmanian and Victorian tracks.

Mrs Beeton must have had some local connection here because she also raced another mare at Albury called Shadforth, whose last three starts resulted in a sixth and two sevenths.

NATIONALS’ senator John Williams has the party’s support to restrict the speed of gophers to 6km/h – walking pace – because he thinks they’re dangerous.

Well, lucky he lives at Inverell and not in the UK because a Pom modified a gopher to do 132km/h and it was recorded in the Guinness Book of Records as the fastest mobility scooter in the world.

But two blokes from the Isle of Man, where high-speed motorcycle races are held around houses on narrow roads, fitted a 600cc Suzuki motorcycle engine to their gopher and replaced the tyres with slicks to smash that record, clocking a frightening 172.1km/h.

Could you imagine the chaos in the shopping centre if Orange gopher owners did some high-performance tuning to their scooters?

Come to think of it, some of the more daring ones already believe they’re Formula 1 drivers as they tear along the footpath in Summer Street.

So, the senator could well be on the ball limiting these things to walking pace because we’ve all had to jump out of their way at one time or another.