Rally to kick cancer is one crazy ride
When two clowns asked me if I'd like to hurtle through the outback with them, in a crappy Ford Falcon, retro-fitted with shark fins and flashing lights, there was only ever going to be one answer.
After all, I'd seen the rest of the teams in the Mystery Box Rally and by comparison the clowns in their afro wigs and red foam noses seemed a relatively safe option.
My journalistic instincts told me the gimps in yellow lycra would be a poor choice as far as chauffeurs go. And as for Captain Krunch and the Cereal Killer, well I wasn't going to take my chances with them.
Welcome to the insanity that is the Mystery Box rally - part of an annual suite of outback adventures that contribute more money to Cancer Council research than any other private fundraiser in Australia.
From the outside, the rally is a hilarious motley crew of adventure seekers who are happy to climb into second-hand cars bought with Monopoly money just hours earlier and set off on an epic journey - destination unknown.
This year, 50-odd teams cruised through one-horse towns from Brisbane to what's known as corner country: that part of Australia where the borders of NSW, South Australia and Queensland meet in a rocky expanse of the Strzelecki Desert.
There were breakdowns, of the mechanical and emotional kind, as our budget wheels were pushed to the limit on cratered, rutted and occasionally flooded outback roads.
There were moments of insanity, as grown men and women dressed variously as cavemen, jellyfish, creepy babies, and the Super Mario Brothers spent the equivalent of a small country's GDP over the bar at Hungerford's Royal Mail Hotel.
And there was the thrill of a real adventure, far removed from the kind offered in glossy travel brochures that so often fail to deliver.
But from the inside, the Mystery Box Rally is so much more than that.
Almost everyone who goes along for the ride has a deeply personal story to tell about how cancer has affected their lives. Mums taken too soon. Sisters. Brothers. Mates.
For Wez Green, one of my new-found clown friends, it was his dad Eric, who lost his battle with the disease three years ago.
The mechanic of 40 years had dropped a fly wheel on his finger at work one day and the injury refused to heal.
Tests down the track revealed cancer cells and despite having his finger amputated, lymph nodes removed, and rounds of radiation and chemotherapy, it found its way into his lungs.
Six years after his initial diagnosis, and just a couple of weeks after his 63rd birthday, Eric died.
He was a country bloke. Honest. Hard working. He loved four-wheel driving, fishing and camping. And he loved his family.
"He would have loved to go on the rally. He would have been in his element," Wez says.
In fact they'd often discussed going on the Mystery Box Rally's big brother event, the Shitbox Rally, in the years he spent battling cancer.
That wasn't to be. But Eric was there for the Mystery Box in no small way.
His dusty brown akubra rode all 2500 kilometres of this year's event, perched on the back ledge of the Falcon masquerading as a shark.
Beside it was a framed photo - Eric smiling from the deck of the Blackwood boat his own grandfather built decades ago, to ply the Glenelg River near Mount Gambier.
It's the way Wez likes to remember his dad.
And when you look closely at so many of the other beat up, dressed up, mechanically questionable cars on the rally, there are subtle signs about the real force behind the event.
Treasured photos. Footy jerseys. Hats. Mementos of lives cut short that are now symbols of a collective determination to beat cancer through research.
THE MYSTERY BOX RALLY, AND HOW IT WORKS:
- Founded by James Freeman, who lost both of his parents to cancer within 12 months of each other.
- Teams must raise a minimum of $3000 to earn their place in the rally, with proceeds going directly to cancer research.
- Teams don't know what they'll be driving until the night before, when second-hand cars, sourced by rally sponsor Manheim, are offered up in a pseudo auction. The more money teams raise, the more pretend money they have to bid.
- The destination is a mystery, until you get there of course, but there are a few guarantees: breakdowns, dodgy roads, and a bucketload of fun.
- There'll be two Mystery Box rallies in 2015, one out of Townsville in August, the other from Sydney in late November.
- For more information go to www.mystery-box.com.au
- Registrations for next year's event are open until October 30.
