Angel on Wheels
Sara Evans made a mercy dash to provide hope for Australia’s most needy
Sara Evans made a mercy dash to the Outback
In the witheringly dry outback of far west NSW, she’s known as the Angel on Wheels. Arriving amid a cloud of red dust at the Packsaddle Roadhouse, Sara Evans rode shotgun into town in a B-double truck filled with donations for the drought-ravaged farmers of Broken Hill, Tibooburra, Menindee and beyond.
Hauling two trailers brimming with everything from cattle feed to toys and palettes of water, the 36-year-old mother-of-two from the NSW Central Coast made the two-day trek to provide some hope to the “forgotten towns” affected by what locals are calling the worst drought in living memory.
“It was an eye-opener – it’s hard to imagine how dry it is out there,” says Sara of the dusty 2600km round trip she made late last year. “There are dead kangaroos and emus everywhere.
“But it was awesome to see the looks on people’s faces when they saw what we had for them and realised people from as far away as the coast cared. It was so touching, and there were plenty of tears shed.”
And no one understands better than Sara what it’s like to stare tragedy in face. Her personal horrific experiences of the past are what eventually led her to Packsaddle, with a population of just 200.
In 1999, Sara was 16 when her aunt Michele Watson was stabbed 17 times by her estranged de facto in a frenzied attack. Sara arrived at the bloody backyard scene in Ourimbah to find Michele on the ground, her three grieving young sons, all under 12, sobbing around her lifeless body. The de facto was hanging dead in a nearby tree.
“That murder shattered our family,” Sara says with tears in her eyes. “I was close to my three cousins, who had to move away to live in Menindee with their dad. Not only did I lose my aunt, my mother’s twin sister, but I lost all my cousins as well.”
Sara endured more heartache when at 23 she witnessed her fiance Kristian, her childhood
‘It was awesome to see the looks on people’s faces’
sweetheart and father of their three-year-old Joshua, killed in a motorcycle accident.
“One of the hardest things l have ever had to do was go home after the accident and explain to Josh his daddy was never coming back,” she stammers.
STRUGGLING TO COPE
Suddenly thrust into single motherhood and suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, Sara struggled to cope and resorted to partying day and night. “I couldn’t face going home,” she admits.
Two years on, she met and married Dave Evans, a no-nonsense panel beater who saved her and lit up her life again.
But it was a friend’s deeply moving story about her young son, who is slowly going blind, which spurred Sara to dive into her first fundraiser – a marathon swim for the Save Sight Institute.
“I trained for a year before attempting it,” says Sara, who was supported by her local Lions Club in the 12-hour swim. “I completed 36 kilometres and raised $65,000 for eye research.”
From then on she was bitten by the charity bug. Sara started feeding the homeless and raising money for the Cancer Council, the Mark Hughes Foundation for brain cancer and a palliative care hospice called Elsie’s Retreat.
“I’m on the phone constantly but it makes me feel good, helping people,” says the mum of Joshua, now 17, and seven-year-old Linkin.
Nominated in the Australia Day Community Awards this year, Sara recently started working at Coach Paul’s Learn To Swim School on the Central Coast and says her next challenge is to swim the English Channel. She admits she likes to think big and engage her community when she’s raising awareness, funds and donations for worthy causes. When it came to her ambitious Central Coast For Our Farmers Donation Drive, it was Sara’s cousins who informed her of how bad conditions were in Menindee, the devastating scene of three recent mass fish kills. The locals, they said, were doing it real tough.
DOING IT FOR HER AUNT
Here was the same Central Darling community that had taken in her cousins after their mother’s senseless murder 19 years ago, suffering extreme hardship. Sara knew she had to do something in memory of Aunt Michele.
After an intense seven-week donation drive aided by the Rotary Club, she hit the road with her trusty truckie Nick, a team of helpers and thousands of dollars worth of donations.
“It was one of the best experiences of my life,” says Sara, who chose Packsaddle Roadhouse as the perfect remote location for a coast-meets-country knees-up.
“As Helen Keller once put it, ‘Alone we can do so little. Together we can do so much.’”