In the heart of NSW's food bowl region, thousands of people converge on the tiny farming town of Deniliquin to celebrate "everything Australian" through the locus of the ute.
But the Deniliquin Ute Muster's simple celebration of fearless, diesel-sniffing ruggedness floats on a growing sense of vulnerability in agricultural communities which are fast becoming dry husks in an uncompromising drought.
Muster veteran Heath "Wombat" McKinna remembers the muster started 20 years ago to drive up tourism in the farming community during the millennium drought.
"Now look, we're doing it all again - 20 years later back in drought," he told AAP on Saturday as a heavily modified V8 ute roared to life behind him.
Wombat's broad-brimmed hat is weighed down with dozens of livestock tags imprinted with dates - trophies which show he's seen more B and S balls and musters than almost anyone else.
He holds the hat down on his head, and watches the ute slip into a figure-eight skid in a dirt paddock for the circlework championships.
The crowd around him cheers.
"It's more than that though - it's a social event, we get to meet and see people we only see once a year," he said.
"But it's the biggest thing in town, it's important for bringing in all these tourists."
The roads into Deni cut through the region's dry, grey fields. Last year it was green and alive with rabbits. The year before it was bordering on swamp-like thanks to heavy rains.
Now flocks of bony sheep kick up dust, a cow rots in the sun.
No mountains of rows of trees reach up to interrupt the blue sky before it meets the horizon on all sides - and no clouds reach down.
Only a handful of farmers can afford to irrigate their fields and flashes of yellow canola butt up against neighbours' red dusty paddocks.
"I don't know how many farmers we lose to the struggle of it all," Wombat says of the drought.
On the other side of the showground, Tom Mulloy watches a thrashing bull throw Mooroopna boilermaker Mark Hallows into the dust.
The pair separately say they travel with the rodeos chasing the adrenaline and sense of brotherhood.
"I ride it like I hate it, I take all my aggression to it," 19-year-old Mulloy says.
Another rider is trampled, his ankle snaps and rodeo clowns pull him to safety. Paramedics hand him a green whistle and cut his jeans.
They can't get his boot off.
"You can't let this stuff get to you, you just hope it's not you next time," Mulloy says.
"Don't overthink it, don't underthink it. Besides what other thing can you do that lets you travel like this?"
The main stage of the ute muster is full of massive country acts; international star Carrie Underwood has punters staking out spots around the stage hours in advance.
But in the ute section of the campgrounds, the no-holds-barred territory which defines the weekend for the young and rum-attuned, it's "getting rowdy" as local Riley Norris says.
"People in the city understand what we're dealing with here, they know we are keeping the country supplied," he says on Friday night.
"But this weekend for me is about meeting good c***s and getting on the piss because heaps of people are sick of thinking about it."
He lights a smoke while a tyre burns out of control in a steel drum.
The man holding the lighter, Matt, drove thousands of kilometres from Perth to be a part of the Ute section.
The next night the tyre fires light up one after another across the section. It keeps the police and firefighters busy, punters explain.
The authorities work their way through the rows, made up of thousands of utes and 4WDs, dousing the fire and dispersing the crowd.
When one is extinguished, a new plume of black smoke leaps up a few hundred metres away over rippling Australian and Bundy Rum flags.
The booze is having an impact. One man, ash scrawled on his face, tries to stop a group of people brandishing a dead tawny frog mouth for the cameras.
The crowd keeps cheering as one of his friends pushes him to the back with a smile.
"Don't worry about him," the friend says.
"(The owl) was dead when we found it."
His friend won't stop yelling, he fears the rest of the country will look at them like they're "idiots".
He paces, agitated, until the cameras leave.
A few metres away a ute sports crude drawings in the thick layer of dust collected on its bonnet, its thunderous exhaust pipes silent.
The back window is crowded with bumper stickers. One reads "#doitfordolly", a reference to a rural anti-bullying campaign, another reads "buy a bale" - an anti-drought campaign.
Australian Associated Press
