Fuelled by bacon and egg butties and an unwarranted sense of optimism, we just pulled out of the Breakfast Creek Hotel, Brisbane, en route to Mitchell for the first leg of the rally.

An inauspicious start: the rally chief mechanic pulls to the side to do work under the bonnet before we even get to the first set of traffic lights. Then Team Stinkeroos, the guys with the multiple redundant GPS systems, lead us deep into the suburbs before we switch to Google Maps.

Well, for better or worse, we are now underway. What could possibly go wrong?