On the morning of May 31, Brunswick resident and The Weekly Review sports reporter Daniel Paproth, along with his dad, Peter, of Werribee, will begin the biggest challenge they have ever undertaken: the Shitbox Rally, which raises millions of dollars for the Cancer Council.
For seven days, we will be one of more than 250 ‘shitboxes’ hurtling, chortling, coughing and spluttering their way from Perth to Darwin.
While dad and I are close, we’ve never spent this much time together.
Each day, we’ll be rising at the crack of dawn, jumping in our shitbox, a VT Commodore (as lifelong Holden men, we couldn’t bear to be inside a Ford for so long), and driving from point A to point B over some of Australia’s harshest outback roads.
The air-conditioning does not work, there is a casette player in lieu of a CD stacker or an auxiliary hole, and the indicator just in front of the passenger door is dangling by a thread.
Dad owns a stack of old cassettes containing lame rock music from the ’70s and ’80s but I have struggled to find cassettes containing Outkast’s greatest hits, or the latest podcast of house music from Revolver Upstairs.
Dad is a mechanic by trade. He knows a myriad of people in the business, and will know exactly what is going wrong with the car as we hit issues along the way.
I once asked dad why the car wouldn’t start as I attempted to return home from a test drive. “Is it in park?” came his beleaguered reply. “Thanks”, I said, as I hung up the phone feeling more than a little silly.
It is fair to say we will probably have a few arguments along the way. The roads are going to be rough, our arses are going to be sore, and the early mornings and late nights are going to be a pain.
But compared to the plight of the people we are raising money for, all that’s going to be pretty easy.
In 2006, we lost Pa – “Big Jack” – to cancer. For 87 years he lived a healthy life, never smoking or drinking, eating well, loving his dear wife “Pats”, his four grandchildren, his eight grandchildren, and until their demise, of which he never got over, the Fitzroy Football Club.
One of his life goals was to make it to my 21st birthday. I expected he would live until he was 100; he barely made my 16th. His life was full and long, but that doesn’t make grief any easier to deal with.
Just ask my dad. He visits his gravestone, where he is laid to rest alongside Nan, who passed away three years later almost to the day, as often as he can, and always returns with red, puffy eyes.
The same week that Pa passed away, we learned that my mum, Jenny, had breast cancer.
Mum underwent radiation therapy and over a series of months fought the cancer into remission, all while we were dealing with the death of a beloved family member.
I’ve always been a naïve person, so cancer’s indiscrimination came as a real shock.
Mum’s cancer came back in 2010, only this time more aggressive. For the first time in my life, I was facing the real prospect of losing my mother. I was upset and angry. This is something you hear about, not something that could ever affect you personally, I thought.
But those cancerous cells, dividing and multiplying in lymph nodes, did not count on my mum’s ability to fight.
Upon hearing the news, she simply rolled up her sleeves and got on with treatment, never letting on how frightened she must have been.
The treatment made it more real than ever before; I had never seen my mum bald, nor had I seen her so pale, or so tired. Months of chemotherapy and radiation treatment knocked her around.
And through all of it, mum was still there for us. She was there for dad when he had a bad day at work. She was there for my sister when she was being bullied at school. She was there for my brother when he needed a lift to a friend’s house and she was there for me when I needed the crusts cut off my sandwiches.
Over the course of a year, mum again fought the cancer into remission. She is the strongest person I have ever known.
Unfortunately, many people who suffer from cancer are not as lucky as my mum. We have countless friends, family and colleagues who have lost people close to them.
It does not discriminate – the very young, the elderly, the healthy, the fit and the firing, it can strike anyone and lead to months and years of hell.
And that is why we are doing the Shitbox Rally.
The Cancer Council do an incredible job helping patients and researching cures, but they need your help, now more than ever.
So please, donate to our Shitbox Rally fundraiser via the links below.
Collectively, the rally has nearly raised $1.2 million.
There will no doubt be times of frustration amid the fun as we make the more than 4000km trek. But it is in those moments we will be thinking of people who have undertaken far greater challenges than us, and with their strength and your support, we’ll reach Darwin knowing that we have all made a difference.
Shitbox Rally
Daniel and Peter’s team, The Papatrons, set out to raise $5000 and have already passed that total.
To donate, visit shitboxrally2014.everydayhero.com/au/the-papatrons
For more information on the Shit Box Rally, visit fundraise.shitboxrally.com.au/event/shitboxrally2014
Follow The Papatrons travels via our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/TheWeeklyReview?ref=hl
