Alice to Barossa tractor trip helps to raise awareness

Setting off on June 8, at a top speed of 20km an hour, the Alice Springs local started the journey south on 1951 TEA20 Massey Ferguson, thus beginning the Highway to Health Tractor Trek.

Shane talked briefly of the expedition during a recent event at Pindarie Wines, Gomersal, which featured an impressive line-up of rural health advocates.

The night marked the final night of the tractor trip before the final leg onto Walker Flat the following day.

Completing the trip on a tractor was purely for the sake of it being a "point of difference", and drawing people together in towns Shane was passing through - which he considered extremely important.

"The message I'm trying to get out, is that people don't have to go through mental health troubles on their own. There are organisations, friends and family who will help you," he said.

"When the tractor had a few hissy fits along the way, people from all across Australia were ringing me, asking how they could help, because that's what's country people do. It just shows that if you need help, people want to give it."

The trip was meant to take place last year - before COVID-19 put a major spanner in the works - while planning started back in 2019.

"I'd been working with (Herd of Hope founder) Megan McLoughlin to put the cattle on Bondi Beach for her charity (raising awareness for organ donation), and trying to work out how to keep the momentum going after that," Shane said.

Along with Pindarie, the trip involved community barbecues at Booleroo Centre, Jamestown and Crystal Brook, raising money to put people through mental health first aid courses facilitated by SA-based organisation Mental Health Partners.

The courses teach people the tools they need to maintain good mental health, and provide support to others, essentially to become 'unofficial' counsellors for their communities,

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With Massey Ferguson having come on-board to support Shane's trip, and Central Australian Driving School, Alice Springs, as a fuel sponsor, Shane said he had been "blown away" by the support.

"We talked to about 10 radio shows on the way, and there has been lots of online interest, and a lot of people contacting us," he said.

"We've had truckies flashing their lights and waving down the road, and so many people saying 'good on you'. It has been a great thing."

ALICE Springs' Shane Muldoon's advocacy for better rural health support was inspired by his own experience back in 2012, when he realised the system as it stood, was lacking.

Shane had been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer, and it took 10 months to be notified of an available follow-up appointment in the city.

"I ended up insisting on going to Adelaide within six weeks of first seeing that urologist - by the time they operated, the cancer had spread. There were severe complications for six months," he said.

"I was just about to start radiation therapy, and that's when Adelaide called me saying they had an available appointment - 10 months later."

Shane said a better triage system should be in place for patients in rural areas, to ensure those who did need follow-up appointments in urban settings, were seen promptly.

"The rural doctors, nurses and hospitals are sensational, but the systems they have to work with, really puts rural Australians in trouble," he said.

"A better triage system would mean if a follow-up appointment in the city is needed, that should be done within a month - then people can go about things based on the results of that appointment.

"The stats for preventable deaths for people vary so much between rural and urban areas. In a suburb in Sydney, the stat is 91/100,000, but in in rural Australia, it's 293/100,000.

"That's three times as many, and it's because services or procedures aren't working sufficiently."

Shane's own charity, Broken Spur, aims to advocate to the government and other services for the need for better health provision for men in rural areas.

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