Your four-wheel-drive hates you. It’s sitting there, in front of your home, preparing to idle in traffic or do the school run, same as always.
But your vehicle dreams of more. It longs to get its boots muddy, sandy, wet or sliding across some of Australia’s most spectacular and remote trails.
So, where the bloody hell are you?
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How about the Sunraysia Safari, billed as Australia’s toughest rally and its greatest motorsport adventure? And you could be doing it in your stock standard 4×4: it just needs a fire extinguisher, decent set of tyres and you and a co-driver buddy in crash helmets.
If you fancy unleashing your inner Colin McRae while kicking up red dirt and dust in delightful desert drifts, this Safari sure beats poolside holidays supping overpriced cocktails.
We entered the four-day Safari in a Mazda BT-50 SP 4×4 dual cab ute, taking on a marathon-like 1,179km of competitive closed tracks, plains, fields and puddled gutters.
Despite the serious distance, our Rally Regularity division is aimed at near-standard vehicles, helping keep costs down.
No need for a competition licence, just a basic Motorsport Australia Speed one ($85 each) as 110km/h is the maximum, monitored by a RallySafe timing and tracking GPS.
Pfft. Limits are for wusses, right?
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Not out here. Even on open straight tracks it remains bumpy, bouncy and unpredictable, while surfaces shift from packed dirt to soft sand to wet ruts in an instant.
Competition bikes and roll-caged rally cars may see 200km/h, but we mortals are content leaving that to the utterly fearless.
Silverware’s up for grabs in our class too. Organisers set a target time and average speed for each stage – typically around 70km/h – with points deducted for every second under or over the ideal.
Sounds slow? Throw in walking-pace sandy turns, avoiding fallen trees and perilous holes, opening and closing gates, plus navigational blunders (easily done) and you must hold serious pace to finish the stage on time. And these are mega stages.
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Longest is a 245km odyssey with target time of 3.5 hours, including a mandatory 10-minute refuelling stop.
Trust me, concentrating on driving or navigating for the length of almost three footy games and you rest well that night.
Hydration’s an imperative, as is a triple shot espresso before starting, along with an empty bladder. Forget the last one and you’re in all sorts.
Our regularity rivals are a 2007 Suzuki Jimny and pre-bruised 30-year-old Mitsubishi Triton; grassroots rallying at its best. Our “race” ute looks altogether more fearsome.
The team behind Mazda Australia’s BT-50 3.0L turbo-diesel entry, as you’d expect, got busy adding choice goodies. Dressed in blue and black livery with “Give it Heaps” stickers, genuine accessories include a snorkel, reinforced side steps, single hoop bull bar, massive spotlights, and beadlock-like 17-inch wheels.
Most helpfully, on went Old Man Emu BP-51 adjustable shock absorbers and Cooper Rugged Trek all-terrain tyres, plus a couple of spares and recovery gear in the tub.
None are imperatives to compete at Sunraysia, but damn they’re all nice-to-haves. As is my co-pilot: ex-Supercars ace and current F1 Medical Car driver Karl Reindler. Sharing driving duties, Karl proves annoyingly excellent at high-speed dirt drifting, fingertip control, not getting stuck and offering ace driving tips when I’m in the hot seat.
A high point comes when the medical/media helicopter hovers low just behind a red earth tight hairpin, scoring footage of silky-skills Reindler hosting a sideways show, with plumes of vibrant dust behind. Hollywood stuff. There’s never a dull moment. I miss the very first turn – braking distances are far longer on dirt – we end up the wrong side of a fence line, and then, schoolboy error, I forget to turn wipers on before hitting a giant muddy water crossing.
The passenger gives roadbook instructions informing of turns, hazards and average speeds, while the pilot indulges in addictive, slidey driving joy.
Out here traction and stability control are a hindrance, with 2H rear-wheel-drive the sweetest setting for feel and fun. We only need a quick switch to 4×4 in really deep sand.
I find a lovely driving rhythm, our BT-50 dancing between twists and turns of this colourful terrain: wildflower fields switch to earth that’s red, orange then salmon pink, misting a technicolour rooster tail in my rear mirror. This is proper adventure driving.
Thanks to our Mazda’s abilities, reliability, no punctures, good maths (oh, and my racing driver teammate), after two days and almost 600 kilometres our timings have been near perfect.
We’re leading our class by an outback country mile, but on day three motorsport proves how cruel it can be. Having handed my seat to another journalist, rotten luck sees our BT-50 come unstuck by a hidden rut in a remote spot, forcing its retirement. The glory may be gone, but dusty, drifty memories remain from this uniquely challenging and beautiful safari. Give it heaps? Mission accomplished.