One one hand... yeah, Apple Maps is an abomination. "It just works", indeed.
On the other hand, shouldn't these tourists have thought that this town's (errant) existence in the middle of nowhere was a little strange? Or, when they arrive at the "destination" and see there's nothing there, shouldn't they have thought to turn back?
So while the Maps servers should be automatically sanity-checking results (like flagging towns appearing in no-town areas), shouldn't the tourists themselves be doing that also?
For instance, my GPS unit tried to route me down a one-way/no-way street in some city, but I didn't drive that way because there were signs and the road was blocked off- I'm not trusting the GPS in the way that the Roadrunner trusts Wile E. Coyote's paintings on the side of the mountain.
But why are these people willingly driving down this road? Is it just Google's/Apple's fault?
Shouldn't there be, well, road signs? Granted, this is Australia, but if they can afford to put out press releases they can at least afford some distance (or in this case, one-way) signs.