Had I known the reality of the Shitbox Rally before it started, I may have quietly reversed out. What a huge mistake that would have been.
A 3500-plus kilometre annual outback pilgrimage in the name of cancer fundraising, the rally is a tough week. It is not much of a holiday for the body, but a terrific one for the mind and soul.
My first Shitbox Rally – from Canberra to Townsville – was reportedly one of the shorter ones. Just try stopping over and over for 10 hours on the roadside as your team mates' cars break down, get fixed under a baking outback sun – then repeat for six days. The nights were cold and windy, spent tossing and turning as we tried to get comfortable in our tent: most slept in tents and swags. A few snuck a night here and there in country motels.
The food is hearty and generous, but as kind as the local community groups feeding us were, they dished up mess hall grub. How else do you feed 500 people?
And everything gets covered in dust. You can't help but marvel at the ingenuity of people living off the bone-dry land once you've driven through hanging dust clouds for days on end.
I teamed up with my mate, Andy, who had wanted to tackle the rally for years, but couldn't find anyone else to make the six-month commitment. That's what it takes from signing up to seeing your car off at the post-rally auction.
The event is a NSW Cancer Council fundraiser; it's raised almost $6.2 million in five years. Soon after we began to raise money, my own mother's breast cancer returned, after 21 years dormant. She's now having chemo treatment in New Zealand. Prostate cancer took my father eight years ago.
The cause, however important, is not what makes the rally a magical experience. That said, the May 2015 event raised the most yet, $1.3 million.
The route for the rally, first organised by Adelaide's James Freeman in 2010 as a tribute to his parents, who had both died from cancer, changes every year. Last year, it ran from Perth to the Pilbara; this year it tackled the Birdsville Track on its way to North Queensland. Next year, the concept will be tried across New Zealand's North Island for the first time.
Freeman also runs two five-day "mystery box" rallies a year.
Participation has three stages. Once accepted in and paid up, you must meet a fundraising target. We aimed for the minimum $4000, but reached $7000. Next you buy a car for less than $1000 and decorate it with a theme. We went for a safety-first approach, buying a Toyota Vienta V6 - with 380,000 kilometres on the clock - and painted it to look like pages from a travel diary.
Driving the rally is the final stage. Those who excel at fundraising get an invite to return. Around half of each year's entrants are returnees. That means about 100 first-time teams get a look in, but it's hard to get a place given the long waiting list.
It was easy to spot the rally finishers in Jupiter's Hotel, as much by their dishevelled appearances as the ubiquitous rally baseball caps. They looked as knackered as we felt.
But there was also a glow of satisfaction. Those who drove the winding, jagged Parachilna Gorge Road - en route to Marree, South Australia - at dusk will know what I mean. That afternoon, on day three, a red sunset mixed with the dust haze was an incredible sight.
Those who chased the horizon on the Birdsville Track a day later felt that satisfaction, too. You couldn't miss the light at sunset on both sides of that vast horizon: one deep orange, the opposite a gorgeous layering of gentle pinks, lilacs, indigos turning into blues and black.
And what is there to say about a phenomenally starry night in the outback that hasn't been said before? Maybe what was most amazing was the brightness of those ancient stars and vast gassy galaxies. Nothing I've ever seen made me feel so small but so part of everything.
For those inspired by more immediate, down-to-earth things, it's hard to beat the satisfaction of getting your car going on the side of the road when it seems a stuffed alternator could end your rally.
The rally takes its own culture - a unique community of 500 people - along with it. You make your own holiday, but also that of your team mates and all the others who queue with you for breakfast, showers, dinner or for petrol. You get to know your fellow teams, negotiating the route, bantering on the CB radio, helping others across dodgy roads, lending a hand at the breakdowns along the way with your assigned "buddy group" of drivers, and relying on their know-how and toolkits.
If a car cannot be started, it limps into camp each night on a trailer and the volunteer mechanics work with the car's owners - not for them.
I'm not usually one for fancy dress parties, but when they take place in the outback, who could refuse?
On our Priscilla Queen of the Desert day, I donned an ankle-length forest-green lurex dress, an auburn wig and hot pink heels (not advisable for driving), looking vaguely like Florence Welch's ugly stepsister. Andrew went for a Warhol-esque blonde wig, pink sequined jacket and micro-skirt.
That day, the entire rally family was a sea of men in eye-popping dresses and the occasional woman raising the bar with a topiary headdress. Oktoberfest day meant the inevitable: hundreds and hundreds of lederhosen outfits and beer wenches. My co-driver and I opted for full-body beer bottle costumes.
It goes without saying it's a rally of great stories, too. We were thrown together with a mine mechanic who salvaged his Holden Apollo from a rat-infested barn; I met a musician from the North Shore who did the rally less than a year after losing his leg in a paragliding accident. And, of course, all around us were sad but incredible stories of cancer survival and loss. One of our team, Paul, took time off his reconstructive surgery to do the rally after having cancerous tissues removed from his sinuses. We nominated him our captain to lead us into Townsville.
At Hughenden, local parents and their kids wandered from car to car, stopping to take our invitation to sign a cancer tribute sticker for a loved one. One was the local mailman, a softly spoken grey-haired man, who casually recounted his two encounters with the Min Min lights – a bizarre phenomenon often seen near Boulia. "One of them was about the size of a tyre and it rose out of the ground and shot off when I walked towards it," he explained.
For me, this summed up the Shitbox Rally: a seven-day experience that brought the sights and stories found on Google right to your driver's window.
www.shitboxrally.com.au/want-to-get-involved
Registration is $660, there's a minimum $4000 fundraising target before departure, and a car must be bought for a maximum of $1000. In 2016, the rally runs from Mackay to Hobart, May 13 -17. The inaugural Shitbox Rally New Zealand (North Island) runs from February 12- 20, 2016.
NSW Variety's annual B to B rally is the oldest and one of the most lucrative, with an estimated $200 million raised for the children's charity in 30 years. Each team must pay at least $8500 to drive the 2015 route from Bass Hill to Bunbury, WA. See www.variety.org.au/NSW/Events/Bash/
In 2015 the Great Escape starts in Kiama on September 7 and ends in Byron Bay 10 days later, but goes via the "Back of Bourke". Entry is $350 and minimum target is $3500. Funds raised go to sufferers of cystic fibrosis. See www.thegreatescape.org.au
This rally raises money for Starlight, which cares for seriously ill children and their families. In August the rally goes from Mudgee to Bathurst with fundraising done along the route. See www.trek4kidz.com/starlight-rally
The route for the NSW rally in 2015 is Coffs Harbour to Port Macquarie (in October) and in Queensland the route is Redcliffe to Rockhampton via the Whitsundays (in July). The Endeavour foundation supports people with a disability. See www.great.endeavour.com.au/
This year's event goes from Alice Springs to Moama (Echuca) in late August. Entry is $4750 with most of that going to Kidney Health Australia. See www.kidneykarrally.com.au
