'Three dogs and a boat': How cancer inspired couple to 'make it all count'

James 'Jimmy' Allan was 35 years old when specialists told him his left torso was crawling with advanced melanoma.

Spreading to the lymph nodes in his armpit, the civil projects manager says for an outdoors lover, farm-raised boy who loves fishing, it was a huge readjustment to a harsh new reality.

"I'd gone to the doctor for a two-second script for something else and he said 'while you're here, how's the rest of your health going?', so I talked to him about a mole that'd been annoying me for a little while, it'd been getting caught on my singlet," Mr Allan said.

"He said 'I don't like the look of that' and after it got cut out with a bunch of other appointments, I ended up having an operation to get more of it removed.

"But for some unknown reason, I was just unlucky, because it'd spread and they couldn't remove it.

"I remember the medical bloke said 'are you a glass half empty or half full kind of guy?' and that talk really ended up really throwing me, because no one had actually said the word 'cancer' to me yet."

Soon after, Mr Allan became one of 100 people to participate in a clinical tele-trial targeting advanced melanoma.

Ditching hours-long commutes to and from Sydney's Westmead, the trial linked him with an Orange-based oncologist for all appointments.

Administered as an intravenous infusion for half-an-hour rounds, Mr Allan received the last of 13 injections of Opdualag - with a fixed-drug combination of nivolumab and relatlimab - at the end of August, 2022.

While he's not exactly cancer-free yet, he is at the beginning of being on his way to a hopeful remission for the first time.

"I felt pretty ordinary during the trial because it knocked me around a bit, sick or feeling fatigued, nauseous with a mouth-full of ulcer and small lesions on my back," he said.

"But the silver lining was the sicker I got, the higher my cellular turnover was and it meant the drug was supposed to be doing what it was meant to be doing, ramping my immunity up to fight the cancer off.

"I was pretty much willing to do anything though, and it had a 25 per cent higher rate of reducing cancer cells with more eyes watching me, so nothing got missed."

On Sunday, January 21 at the peak of summer, the federal government announced the imminent Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) listing of Opdualag.

For use in Australians over the age of 12, the new advanced melanoma treatment will be be effective for reimbursement from February 1.

It was also be made available for those diagnosed with melanoma that has spread (metastatic) or unresectable - meaning the cancer cannot be removed by surgery.

"I'll still have to get scans and blood tests every three months, but the more people keeping an eye on it, the better," Mr Allan said.

"The melanoma itself has definitely modified the way I live, because the sun's my worst nightmare now.

"Instead of sitting in the boat with footy shorts on, you're covering yourself completely, from head to toe, doing everything you can not to let the sun sit on your skin at all.

"But then on the flip side of it all, it's also really changed our lifestyle for the better."

His partner is Ellen Clark, a dentist with Orange Health Service. Mr Allan says the couple had long discussions about changing their future plans to include children.

Fearful his melanoma could rear its head again, where he'd "get crook and couldn't help", the pair decided to throw their love into outback camping and fishing adventures together.

Included during their travels are their three labradors, Honey, Sissy and Teddy.

"We had a big talk and figured if we're not going to build big savings for children, we're going to make the most of our great incomes and do these awesome trips," he said.

"Last year we drove the Nullabor and fished all over Western Australia and the end of this year we'll drive to Cape York, because we don't want to be those people where if something does go wrong, we don't have any stories to tell.

"So, anywhere we go now, we've got three dogs and a boat behind us; and we make it all count."