Road trips in Australia: The great Aussie motel is set to make a comeback

"[There's the absence of] internal corridors and large reception areas that guests need to pass through to enter and exit the property," he said. "It simplifies social distancing for guests and hotel operators."

Let us not forget that it was motels which pioneered the assurance of paper wrappers around toilets emblazoned with the words, "hygienically sealed for your protection", and in response to COVID-19 Choice Hotels has launched a new "Commitment to Clean" program, featuring the use of hospital-grade disinfectants.

Dean Long, the chief executive of the Accommodation Association of Australia, believes that the retro factor inherent in many motels will offer some new-found appeal in the age of COVID-19 and an alternative to the laissez faire, unregulated AirBnb properties, with clearly-defined standards of cleanliness set to form an integral part of all future holidays.

"We have seen across generations, a yearning for experiences that are considered vintage with all of the modern amenities we demand in 2020 and many of our regional operators are perfectly positioned for this market," Mr Long said.

But Trish Gordon, owner of the Albury Townhouse Motel on the NSW-Victoria border, which is averaging three guests a night with a room rate of $89 - down from the usual $110 - is not quite as sanguine.

"It's a trying time for motels," Mrs Gordon said.

"It'll be a long time before it comes back to normal. But we're all in the same boat here. We're lucky to have three guests a night though at the start of the pandemic we were only getting one."

Although intrastate travel in NSW has been approved from June 1 Victorians across the bordering Murray River are still unable to holiday in their own state, let alone a neighbouring one with the future of domestic travel uncertain.

Unlike the US, where motel nostalgia thrives in properties faithfully restored to their former kitsch-infused glory, relatively few Australian motor-inns have received such treatment. However, some properties have been converted into de facto luxury hotels.

These include Halcyon House in Cabarita Beach, NSW, the former surfside hotel, Bannisters in Mollymook, a repurposed 1970s motor inn, also in NSW and Zagame's House, once the landmark Downtowner Motel in Melbourne's inner-city Carlton dating to the late 1960s.

"There's always been an opportunity for the motel industry to better embrace and understand the reasons why so many people like motels so much," Mr Ross said.

"But if you're thinking of motels as just a cheap bed for the night it's a misunderstanding of the certain heritage aspect of them."

Fascinated by the culture around motels that offered middle-class Australians such as his parents a taste of American-stye glamour, motor inns still conjure fond, if somewhat perverse memories for Mr Ross.

"I want to walk into a motel room and be reminded of my family holidays as a child," Mr Ross said, who is working on a forthcoming photographic exhibition on motels with Canberra's National Archives of Australia in Canberra.

"The brown brick walls of the room, the clock radio flashing the wrong time, the cars arriving outside at 2am with the beam from the headlights streaming through the frosted glass above the door."

Kate Berry, who shares Ross's love of motor-inn culture, runs the popular OK Motels on Instagram and is building a nostalgic online directory for devotees to "find a place to stay that features breezeblocks, wood panelling or even a vibrating bed". She is saddened that the breakfast hatch is now, more or less, an open and shut case.

"It is a shame that most motels now don't offer the breakfast hatch, as it became too much work," she said.

"And some cited security as a reason for nailing them shut too. But when you do roll up to a motel that does have that little slip of a breakfast menu, it's quite a moment."

Anthony Dennis is travel editor of the Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age