Greg Donovan got a $300k redundancy payout. Then he took the biggest punt of his life and started the Big Red Bash music festival - ABC News

But Greg could see his desert dream becoming reality.

I thought, let's roll the dice," Greg says.

He was wasting away really," Greg says.

"I just saw my ribs and I saw my hips poking out and my shoulder blades and I looked like a skeleton," he says.

It was difficult," Greg says.

"He felt like he had a lot of responsibility to be able to look after the family and in this situation, there was nothing that he could do at all," he says.

"That was a really hard time for our family.

He couldn't cure Stephen, so Greg eventually decided that running to raise funds and awareness for type 1 diabetes was the next best thing he could do to help.

"The hardest running event in the world" seemed like an ideal all-consuming goal for Greg.

"I thought, well that's it, that's got to be the hardest thing I can find," Greg says.

"Once he did have this idea, it did feel like we were getting the happier Greg back," Raylene says.

While most people would be exhausted, Greg felt the logical next step was to launch his own event.

Raylene thought Greg "had rocks in his head".

Greg identified an outback town, with a population of 100, as the perfect base for a running event.

Traditional owner and park ranger Don Rowlands gave Greg a bird's eye tour of Munga-Thirri National Park, commonly known as the Simpson Desert, on a helicopter ride.

"John [Williamson] agreed to come out and sing on top of the Big Red dune," Greg says.

"It just opened our mind to the fact that we could put on a music event in the middle of nowhere and people want to come and buy tickets for it," he says.

In 2014, Greg and his family decided to run a music event separately, prior to the running event.

Nowhere near enough people purchased tickets to cover the expenses of bringing live music to the desert.

Greg had been spending too much time on his side hustles.

It was time for Greg to "revisit this music thing", up the ante, and bring some great acts to Birdsville.

"I thought, well the biggest name in Aussie rock is Jimmy Barnes.

"I would have advised Greg to put his redundancy money to his retirement plan, not take a high risk," he says.

"I thought well super, or Jimmy Barnes – Jimmy Barnes [is a] better investment any day of the week," Greg says.

In 2018, when it became obvious more people preferred to listen to music in the desert rather than run 250 kilometres through it, Greg dropped the Big Red Run.

The event has become a full-time commitment for the family, but Stephen says it's all been for the best.

Side stage, on the first night of the event, the family continues their ritual of stopping for a quiet moment of reflection to remember where it all began.

With their arms wrapped around each other, Greg tells Stephen, "this is what you've created, and we've created together as a family.

"I would describe Greg's journey from the insurance business to become a promoter as unfathomable," music promoter Marc Christowski says.

"Call me the accidental music promoter, but really I'm probably the world's oldest teenager," he says