Richard Jefferay has always been mad about vintage vehicles, even doing up a 70-year-old tractor to mow his lawn.
The 1950s Massey Ferguson has no suspension, no cab and a rough old spring under the seat.
“I just put a bit less air in the tyres to make it more comfortable,” Richard said.
The long-time mechanic will want to be pretty comfortable when he drives the same tractor 1200km along bumpy back roads from Bourke, in western NSW, to the outback Queensland town of Birdsville in August.
Richard, from the NSW town of Parkes, will be among nine men making the 11-day trek on old tractors to raise money for the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia.
“I couldn’t jog or walk that far, I’m telling you, or climb a mountain or swim across an ocean,” he said.
“But it’s not that hard driving the tractor, you just sit back and pull the throttle right down.”
Richard and his mates have been trekking to raise money for various health and rural charities over the past decade.
The Bourke-to-Birdsville route will be their longest journey, having previously ventured from Cobar to Louth, in far-west NSW, and Bourke to Hungerford, in Queensland.
It takes the best part of a day to cover 100km on the tractors — which have a top speed of 23km/h — with only AC/DC songs, the odd wild animal and the outback red dust to keep them company.
The men thaw frozen meals on the bonnets of the tractors in the morning and eat from camp oven cook-ups on the side of the road at night.
“There’s no showers, no toilets, no cabins on the tractors — we’re just swagging it,” Richard said.
The spectacle of clapped-out tractors making their way through the bush is aimed at raising awareness among rural men, including the truckies that pass the group.
Prostate cancer is the most commonly identified cancer in Australia, with an estimated one in six men expected to be diagnosed by the age of 85.
“It’s about awareness, for people to talk about it and work out what they have to do,” Richard said. “It’s very easy, you go to your GP for a simple blood test and go from there.”