Geoff Mack, the Australian songwriter and World War II veteran best known for writing "I've Been Everywhere," died on 21 July 2017 in Gold Coast, Queensland, nine years before this anniversary. He served in the Royal Australian Air Force from 1942 to 1946 before building a career as an international performer, but he is chiefly remembered for penning a song that became a country music standard, recorded by more than 100 artists worldwide.

Mack wrote the song almost as an afterthought in 1959 as an opener for a Sydney show, initially filling it with Australian place names and never bothering to write it down for years. Australian singer Lucky Starr had the first hit with it in 1962, and Hank Snow's American version, for which Mack rewrote the lyrics with North American towns using an atlas and magnifying glass, topped the country charts for two weeks that same year. The song's enduring popularity, with lyrics adapted to dozens of locations over the decades, later earned Mack a place in the Songwriters Hall of Fame.