The Shitbox Rally: What I learned

I’m driving along the red, parched earth of the Australian Outback that I know is teeming with deadly snakes, dangerous spiders and apparently some mysterious species of bear called a drop bear that learnt about moments before starting the engine. I’m wondering, how did I find myself in this situation?

 Turns out, I’m not alone. Looking like someone who is learning how to drive for the first time in this beat up 1994 Holden Commodore, my new friend and co-driver Renee is pressed up the grey leather steering wheel that is blushing with red earth from the drive’s hectic roads. It protests violently in her hands, shaking and jerking every which way as we power over rocky, unpaved roads. Renee weathers the storm and keeps her hands at a steady three and nine of the clock, her knuckles practically bursting out of the skin as she grips the wheel with all her might. The smile never leaves her face.

The world has a funny way of working itself out. I had left Australia back in March with the belief that there was a strong chance I would be back, that there was a possibility it was just a simple see you later instead of a goodbye for good.

And here I was, a couple of months later, driving across some of Australia’s most unforgiving terrain in a ‘shitbox’ of a car with a woman I had met only days before and trusting her with my life – all in the name of cancer.

That name is the Shitbox Rally, an Australian event that fundraises money for the Cancer Council.

Founder and Adelaide-based James Freeman started the Shitbox Rally after losing both of his parents to cancer within a year of each other, first losing his mother in October 2007 and then his father just 11 months later.

What started out as a rally of 18 cars in its first year in 2010 raising just $104,000, the rally has grown dramatically throughout the five years.

To date, the rally has raised more than $4 million for the Cancer Council, making it the largest private independent fundraiser in the country for the organisation. This year’s rally raised a total of $1.5 million dollars, which was more than the hoped-for $1.4 million the rally aimed to raise.

Additionally, the 2014 Shitbox Rally saw 250 cars, priced $1,000 or under, participating – including the rally cars, the support vehicles and medical support cars – all while testing their might, their engines and the duct tape holding all the bits and pieces of the cars together as we set out on the journey of a lifetime.

Each year the rally’s route changes, and this year’s was the longest one yet: a 4,250 kilometre journey from Perth to Darwin via the Kimberley and Gibb River Road.

“All the rally routes are of equal playing field, but we knew [the 2014 rally] was going to be even tougher because the distance is just so incredibly long,” Freeman tells me one day as we drive together from Broome to Fitzroy’s Crossing on Day 4 of the rally.

 When I first learned about the Shitbox Rally, I did not realise exactly what I was in store for until a week before the race started. My teammate Renee, whom I had yet to meet, e-mailed me with a list of all the things she had prepared for our trip. Among the items was a snake proof tent.

“What is a snake-proof tent? I didn’t even know they make snake-proof tents! What is going on?” I remember thinking to myself in absolute bewilderment. I started wondering what exactly it was that I had gotten myself into.

As a traveller I pride myself on being able to adapt to everything around me. There is no such thing as a comfort zone to me anymore; that concept was long gone after I lived and worked in China as a reporter.
But this – a rally that would see us drive through some of the hottest places on earth, along some of the country’s toughest unsealed roads and cross rivers that are infested with crocodiles – was this something even the most seasoned traveller could handle with ease?

There was no reassurance in thinking that the car could handle it all, because whenever I told myself that I quickly remembered that I was driving in a shitbox.

This was a trip that made me start feeling like maybe I was not as adventurous as I thought.

Yet in the end it seems that on a personal note, overcoming the challenge is what is what the Shitbox Rally was all about.

It was about challenging myself to do the impossible, doing what may scare me, pushing myself to surpass any boundaries that the Outback may have formed around me and learning invaluable lessons on life in the process.

“So long as the car just rolls onto its side, then we are fine,” Renee nonchalantly said to me on Day 2 of the rally as we prepared ourselves to wave goodbye to the bitumen for the next couple of days. The first stretch of dirt roads lie ahead of us, and I felt physically ill with fright.

Yet I found comfort in those crazy words of hers, nodding my head yes as if I was some sort of ice skating superstar getting words of wisdom from her mentor just before stepping out onto the ice. I found comfort in Renee’s blind faith, trust and confidence in me, someone she had never driven with, some girl from New York who is used to driving on the opposite side of the road and who is never been on a dirt road before.

Renee made me believe in myself, and I started to feel like this was something I was born to do.

Together we drove down some of the toughest roads in the country under the unforgiving sun of the Kimberley and the Gibb River Road encompassed by the kind of scenery that you see on the pages of National Geographic. It seemed that much of our surroundings clearly kept Renee very entertained.

“This road has been straight for a long time, and there is a curve up ahead. You know I have been driving on a straight road for too long when I feel the need to announce that,” Renee says to me one day on the rally in that nonchalant tone of hers.

 Yet straight roads aside, what we saw driving through the Outback was unparalleled to the Australia I came to know and love throughout my years living here.

The image of a group of young Aboriginal kids running up to the roadside and waving us on as we ripped through the desert roads driving from Marble Bar to Broome is one that hangs in my mind like a framed photograph. We passed boab trees that looked stuffed from a big Thanksgiving dinner, dingoes staring off from the distance, and though I sadly did not see many live kangaroos, I did learn that there is a something called a wallaroo. There were never signs of drop bears, but I kept my eyes peeled for them.

We made stops in towns along the way, driving on to the beautiful Cable Beach and going for a swim in waters that I later found out had crocodiles wandering about them the day before.

Throughout the rally, I drove in a buddy group – Buddy Group 2 – that was six cars turned seven. We sort of adopted one car somewhere along the way that seamlessly became a part of the family that we created.

From the two brothers who were Team Spaceship and taught me every outlandish Outback expression that even most Australians do not know, like what it means to throw your dollies out of the pram; Team NBN whom we adopted, who collectively were a wealth of all the knowledge of the world and who wired their car to stream the entire race live for others to follow; Monsters Inc who created a night-club of a car that they beamed with pride about like it was their first born; Holy Smoke 2 whom I would always have a good laugh with over the radio as the delirium settled at sun down after driving for 400 kilometres straight.

Then there were the Boobsters Sisters, the team whose story most inspired me and the team whose story most touched my heart. Whereas many of my group members did the rally for the experiences to be had all in the name of good fun, the Boobsters set out on a more personal journey.

It was the third day of our trip when we came to our first river crossing, cueing up in a line of cars that seemed to never end, that I walked with one of the Boobsters to stretch our legs. I learned she was diagnosed with terminal cancer and was given two to four years to live.

I was in shock, not so much by not knowing what to say but instead by the idea that someone can be given a timeline or expiration date in life. Yet she seemed at peace in a way that exuberated determination and strength, like she was more than ready to take on the biggest bully in the classroom. I later asked her how it changed her views on life, and she told me that she one day just woke up and decided, “No. Not going to let this happen.”

And I admire her. I admire her tremendously for being a brave inspiration and beacon of strength, a symbol honouring the fact that life is a gift, and we need to love the one we are given.

I admire my entire buddy group because it was the backbone of my trip. We were a group that carried one another from start to finish, and little did they know that they were helping me say goodbye to Australia with the best memories in the most beautiful of ways.

They helped me to quell any doubts, face any fears, stomp away any snakes that might be lurking in the bushes.

Yet most of all they helped me to leave a lasting legacy in Australia: The New Yorker who took on the Outback (learning in the process that drop bears don’t exist), and she won.

We all won.

I covered the rally on behalf of the Escape Lounge, which is where this article first appeared. All thoughts and opinions on the experience are my own. To learn more about the Shitbox Rally, please visit the website. 

Category: Quotes

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