The crew and their 2005 Au Ford Fairway were part of the 41 car convoy belonging to the Rust and Dusty Rally held in December.

In its third year the Rally was able to raise a total of $140,000 for charity, $14,000 of which was raised by the Griffith locals Brendan Stewart Stephen Sargent and Daniel Geddes.

With the trio all being employees of Irribiz in Griffith the group decided to choose an aquatic theme for the name of their car, settling on Water Pistols.

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The car itself was a bargain according to crew member Brendan Stewart, coming with full functional air conditioning, cruise control, and leather seats.

"We did around 10 hours every day, the first day left Hay and drove to Tilpa, second day we drove to Hungerford, then we went from Hungerford to White Cliffs and then we went by Ivanhoe to Hay."

"We were lucky we had no real trouble but we did lose the back half of our exhaust on the second day and the rest of it on the last day," Mr Stevens said.

"We had to cut up a stubby holder up and put it in our ears as ear plugs."

Event coordinator Sharon Hicks said the rally first started in Hay in 2016.

This was after community members became motivated to put together a fundraiser for Hay Can Assist after thieves stole cash which was being raised for the charity from a local hotel.

With the Rally also having raised $140,000 in 2017, Mrs Hicks said she had not expected to event to do so well in 2018 because most of the major sponsors that the group had attracted the year before had to pull out, due to the strains they were facing from drought.

"The average sponsorship this year was $150, that's a hell of a lot of sponsors," Mrs Hicks said.

"Because financially people are struggling we had a lot of in-kind financial support given.

"That's where it was a different rally to the year before people had money the year before and this year money is a lot tighter we found we were getting support in different ways.

"We had meals given from camp oven to BBQ all the crews said the food was exceptional and they all got packed lunches, a lot of the guys said it was better cooking than they can cook themselves.

"Most of the crews slept in swags nearly all of them have said they want in again next year, It leaves you with a soft and warm fuzzy feeling."

The final total raised was $144,510 with $65,000 going to Can Assist branches in Hilston, Condobolin, Deniliquin and Coleambally.

Other grants included $26,000 which went to Angel Flight, $24,000 going to the Cancer Council Western Division and $25,000 which went to the Hay Community Health Trust.

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