Variety Bash: from Bonnyrigg to Alice Springs

The community of Bonnyrigg will gather Sunday at dawn to watch 120 ‘basher’ cars start their engines as they embark on a 4400km road trip to raise money for children in need.

A convoy of Variety Bash cars leave for the 2017 fundraiser on day one of the 10 day adventure.

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The Variety Bash is a 4400km road trip across Australia’s beautiful and unforgiving outback that requires volunteers to raise $8500 if they want to participate. This year’s event, scheduled for August 12, will see 300 people drive from the carpark at Bonnyrigg Plaza to Alice Springs over ten full days.

Along the way, participants stop by schools to donate all kinds of supplies, including wheelchairs, communication devices, education aides, medical items and more.

“Nothing puts a bigger smile on your face than when you pull up at a school where they got nothing, and you donate to them play equipment, or two wheelchair-accessible bubblers worth $16,000,” said Dave Simmons, 50, who will be participating in his sixth Variety Bash this year.

Dave Simmons will drive this 1967 Dodge Phoenix for 10 days from Bonnyrigg to Alice Springs for this year's Variety Bash.

“It’s a good cause and it’s a great way to see the country, to go to places you’d never go to in a million years,” he said.

Mr Simmons will drive a 1967 Dodge Phoenix – compliments of his company, Mini-tankers – with two other colleagues. The trio – who have raised $15,000 so far, about $10,000 shy of their target – will be stopping at ten schools along the way.

“Last year in the Northern Territory we came across a dirt road,” he said. “We stopped, had a coffee break and played cricket.”

The participants of last year's Variety Bash pull over at a pub in the Rural town of Logan, Queensland.

This year’s volunteers will meet at Bonnyrigg Plaza at 6am, more than half an hour before the sun is scheduled to rise, as they mingle with members of the community before taking off.

The event has wide community support, with the local school, Bonnyrigg Public, hosting a sausage sizzle breakfast to raise funds. While Franky & Co, a retailer from the shopping centre, will be setting up a coffee and donut cart.

And then, at 8.30am, the convoy of boisterous, fun and rust-bucket cars will leave Bonnyrigg Plaza, to start a ten day epic that’ll take them to the very centre of our sunburnt country.