When 47-year-old Tim Weale felt a niggling pain in his hip, he assumed it was due to sleeping on the hard earth in a tent with his family.

It was 2023 and Tim, his wife Bridget and their two children, Clancy and Maeve, then aged six and eight respectively, were ticking a major item off their family bucket list: a ‘lap of the map’ in Outback Australia.

‘Bridget and I, we kind of always had a bit of a passion for outdoor adventure,’ Tim tells me.

‘It was one of our dreams in life that when our kids were old enough, we’d take them on an Outback adventure. It was as much for them, but also for us. I grew up in the country, and spent four and a half years living on Lord Howe Island as a boy. 

‘There were no rules, we didn’t wear shoes, all that sort of stuff. Even though our kids have grown up in the inner west of Sydney, we just wanted to give them a bit of that exposure in their childhood, at an age where they could remember it.’

And so, the Weale family set off on the trip of a lifetime.

‘We were in the Kimberley visiting the Mitchell Plateau, and to get there it was about 800km of driving on unsealed corrugated dirt roads,’ says Tim.

‘So I assumed the bumping around, combined with being in my mid-forties, had left me feeling worse for wear.’

Later, while travelling down the west coast of Australia, Tim’s shoulder started playing up.

‘I asked Bridget to check if there was a big knot that she could see, but she couldn’t really feel anything,’ Tim recalls.

‘I went to a physio while we were in Carnarvon, and they did some dry needling, but it never really got better.’

Despite these niggling ailments, there was always an equally adventurous activity to explain the symptoms away.

A sore groin in Exmouth? Probably pulled it swimming with whales or snorkelling.

Joint pain in his tailbone? Again, they were doing so much off-road driving.

‘The pain never lasted for too long, and I certainly never thought it could be a sign of something more serious,’ Tim says. 

But once the family had finally made their way back across the Nullabor and returned to Sydney, Tim discovered a symptom he could not ignore.

‘One morning, not long after being back, I discovered blood in my ejaculate,’ he says.

‘And I thought – well that’s not good.’

Tim’s doctor ordered a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test, which is the first line of investigation for prostate cancer, but assured Tim that he wasn’t too worried based on his age and lack of any family history of the disease.

‘The average number for a male of my age on a PSA test is usually between one and three,’ Tim explains.

‘When my results came back, they were at 64. The doctor had never seen a result come back so high.’

Thinking there must have been an issue with the test, Tim’s doctor ordered a repeat. This time, it came back at 84.

‘It was then that he said to me, “Okay, there’s a big problem here,” and sent me for more tests.

Those tests included an MRI, bone scan, PET scan and a prostate biopsy ‘which consisted of 12 metal rods through your perineum,’ Tim adds wryly.

‘Not a lot of fun.’

Even worse: the barrage of tests confirmed everyone’s worst fear – it was not only prostate cancer, but stage 4.

‘They confirmed the prostate cancer had “jumped the fence”, as I explain it, out of the prostate, and had spread to my hip, my pelvic bones, my tailbone, my pubic bone, two spots in my spine, two ribs, my scapula, and there were two spots in my lung as well,’ Tim explains. 

The veteran, who even while recalling the worst day of his life, does so with a twinkle of humour, sobers when he relives the day he got that news.

‘2023 was the year of the absolute highest of highs, being on the trip with my family, to the lowest of lows, getting this diagnosis in December, just before Christmas,’ he says.

‘I’d come to terms with my own mortality when I was a much younger man in the army,’ he says.

‘But as a father, all I could think about was my wife and kids, and my parents too – what their lives would be like without me.’

Even so, Tim remained determined.

‘Throughout the testing process I’d been preparing for whatever news was to come, but at the same time I knew that no matter what it was, I was just going to hit it head on,’ he recalls.

‘I decided we were going to beat it. From the beginning, that was absolutely my mindset.’

And tackle it Tim has.

Starting with radiation and hormone treatment to reduce his testosterone (what he describes as the ‘food source’ for his cancer), Tim then underwent chemotherapy for five months between January and May last year.

‘I worked the entire time,’ says Tim, ‘I was determined to preserve as much normality as I could.’

After finishing chemo, Tim got the best news he’d heard all year.

‘So while my initial PSA levels were 64 and then 84, they had actually continued to rise rapidly before treatment,’ he says.

‘Right before I started chemo, that number got to 154. Once I’d finished chemo, when they re-tested a few months later, that number was 0.010.’

Tim says the emotional release he felt upon hearing the news was like nothing he’d experienced.

‘So essentially, all that means is that my cancer stays forever in my body, but the way I describe it is that it’s asleep. The last set of scans couldn’t see any growth from the scans pre-chemo to post-chemo, there was no growth in those areas where the cancer had kind of eaten away my bones, and the spots that were in my lung, one of them was about the size of a 20 cent piece, and they could no longer see it. It was undetectable.’

Tim has quit his corporate job at an ASX 100 company to spend time with his children and focus on raising funds for cancer research through the Chris O’Brien Lifehouse.

‘Instead of raising funds for shareholders, I’m raising funds for cancer,’ Tim jokes, adding that the pace of innovation and research in the area of cancer treatment gives him hope.

‘The Chris O’Brien Lifehouse and the research they do is just incredible,’ he says.

‘And research now moves very quickly. The drug I take day and night now, a year ago, was not on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, and it was $3,800 a month,’ he says. 

‘Two years ago, it was still in trials overseas, and now it’s not only the gold standard of treatment, but it’s also on the PBS and costs me $8 a month.’

As well as helping raise funds, Tim is passionate about sharing his story so that other men in his position don’t miss the signs that something is wrong.

‘Looking back, I had some symptoms even before the trip,’ he says. 

‘I’d noticed that when I did a wee, at the end I’d have to really relax and I felt like there was still some left to go. I also noticed some subtle changes in the colour and texture of my ejaculate.’

According to the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia (PCFA), prostate cancer in young men is on the rise.

Four hundred and three men under the age of 49 are diagnosed with prostate cancer each year in Australia, representing about 1.58 per cent of all newly diagnosed men.

Over the past 40 years, the number of men being diagnosed in their 40s has increased by about 2,500 per cent, largely due to the advent of PSA testing and the availability of testing to younger men.

‘We have recently released new draft guidelines that recommend men have a baseline PSA test at the age of 40 so that they can routinely monitor their PSA levels and identify any concerns as early as possible,’ PCFA CEO Anne Savage explains.

‘Early detection is key to survival – we encourage men to talk to their doctor about getting checked.

‘It is vitally important for younger men at a higher risk of prostate cancer to start PSA testing from an earlier age.

‘Those at higher risk include men with a direct male relative impacted by the disease, or second-degree relatives who have died from prostate cancer.’

And Tim’s message to Aussie men couldn’t be clearer:

‘If you notice any change, the slightest change whatsoever in your body, either the kind of pains I experienced, or even the changes in the consistency and colour of your ejaculate, or a different feeling when you urinate, go and get it checked straight away.

‘Don’t just think it’s normal or go to Dr Google. Go and see your doctor and get tested, especially if you’ve got a family history of it,’ says Tim.

‘But even if you don’t have a family history – just go and get a baseline [test],’ he adds.

‘It’s just a tick of a box on a blood test. And if the doctor says no, just press them, say I’m the reason why.’

This May, Tim is sharing his story in support of Chris O’Brien Lifehouse’s Tax Appeal, which aims to raise funds for crucial biomarker research. You can donate here.