The reverse gear on Tim Fischer's old blue Ford tractor doesn't work any more and Nationals leader Michael McCormack thinks that's fitting.
Mr McCormack took his campaign and the party's wooden wombat to the NSW town of Lockhart where the former deputy prime minister was born.
About 200 people filed into the Greens Gunyah Museum on Thursday to honour Mr Fischer, who represented the area in state and federal parliaments for more than 30 years.
The exhibition had every mobile phone he ever used - except the one in his pocket - along with his sweat-stained Akubra and volumes of Hansards recording his parliamentary speeches.
In the shed behind the gallery where the community gathered, Mr Fischer's first and only tractor sat almost fully restored but lacking the ability to go backwards.
"That's probably metaphorical because Tim Fischer never goes in reverse," Mr McCormack said.
The deputy prime minister counts Mr Fischer among his political heroes.
He's hoping to emulate him by clinging to the job after the May 18 election.
Mr Fischer went on three wombat trails during the 1993, 1996 and 1998 campaigns.
"It's always hectic, but it's always great to get around this great country during an election campaign and listen up as Michael has the privilege of doing," he told AAP.
Mr McCormack admitted it was hard to top Norm Alexander, who remembered the old days of Country Party politics in Lockhart and surrounds.
He had the room in raptures as he spun cheeky yarns about scrutineering over the phone and red fountain pens being used to give clues on how people were voting.
Mr Alexander also had some iron laws of arithmetic of his own.
If two farmers died, the Country Party votes went with him, but that could be offset by the two school teachers who just left town taking Labor support with them.
After the museum, Mr McCormack went back to his hometown of Wagga Wagga where he launched his campaign for the seat of Riverina.
He's a Nationals leader more in the mould of Mr Fischer and Warren Truss rather than the brash and mercurial man he replaced, Barnaby Joyce.
"I don't go out and shout from the roof tops and spruiking how I'm fighting, and doing this and doing that, I just get on and get things done," Mr McCormack told AAP.
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