Britt’s aptly named F U Cancer tour is not just about raising money for the McGrath Foundation. 

It’s personal.

Britt is using it to close a chapter of her life and move on. The cancer diagnosis hit her from left field – and it hit her for six.

“Cancer wasn’t even in my family, at all,” she says. 

“My best friend at high school’s mum died from cancer so I can’t say it has never affected me, but it’s been quite distant from me for most of my life.

“And it’s funny because before I got diagnosed, and I’m talking just a couple of months before, I was having a conversation with my folks about cancer and I was saying ‘god we’re really lucky, our family, we haven’t really got any health issues’. 

“Almost every family has something, you know? Then two months later it all went bad. I should have just kept my mouth shut.”

Before deciding to speak publicly about her diagnosis, Britt struggled with competing emotions. It was in her nature to be positive and upbeat but on the other hand, this was cancer.

“I could have gone one of two ways and I think both are completely acceptable. Some people just want to run and hide and not tell anybody and I thought about that. About hiding away for a year and not telling anybody,” she says. 

“And that certainly is a natural instinct, to just go ‘oh my god I don’t want people to know and I don’t want to burden people with this’. 

“You get all those thoughts. 

“It’s human nature to want to deal with it yourself, I guess.

“But I then took a few days and thought you know what? I have a responsibility here and with whatever little power that I have I can do something good with this and make it a positive thing.”

Britt is not one to rest on her laurels and watch life pass her by, and has a finger in many pies. Spending hours hooked to a machine or being confined to a hospital bed didn’t sit well with her. She likes to be busy so finding ways to turn a negative into a positive helped. 

Preparing for her wedding to long-time love Beverley also helped. A lot. It gave Britt a purpose and something to look forward to, even on the darker days. It later emerged that the couple had eloped to Las Vegas and married two years earlier, in 2013, and that their October 17, 2015, “wedding” was actually their second anniversary.

Britt wore a long blonde wig to her wedding at Newcastle’s Bella Vista mansion, though, and a stunning Melanie Ford gown. She was quoted as saying she “wanted to feel normal” for her big day. Talking to Weekender this time around, she appears truly comfortable with her pixie hair style – and in herself.  

Another step forward in the healing process.  

“I’m not going to lie, I still have my days when I am not positive and where I do struggle, just like anybody else,” she says. 

“Do I ever ask ‘why me?’ Definitely, I won’t deny that.

“They are the days that you stay at home and rest your mind, because I think that is just as important. To let yourself have that cry you need. But then I’d go out and I’d try to put on a really positive face and keep it happy and upbeat.”

Britt says she is in the clear and cancer free, having been advised by doctors that they were “pretty confident” the cancer hadn’t spread.

Boneshaker was nominated for Best Country Album at last year’s ARIA Awards and earned her six nominations in the 2016 Golden Guitar Awards in January, where she was named Female Artist of The Year. And earlier this year she bought Rhythms Magazine and made it a Newcastle-based, Britt family affair.

She is editor of the blues and roots bible, her father is a sub-editor, her husband is in sales and marketing, her cousin is the accountant and her mother is “doing the mail-outs to subscribers”.  

It was just the start to the year she needed – busier than ever and plenty to do to keep her active mind occupied. 

Britt is now committed to encouraging others to be proactive about their health. She even gave the author a lecture during our conversation (which was deserved).

“Cancer isn’t always a death sentence. If you get it early enough you can do something about it,” she says.

“This tour is about telling people to go to the doctor and get checked because it’s 100 per cent what saved my life.

“I just couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate this all being over, once and for all, than playing music with my mates. That, for me, is just perfect and then I can move on. 

“I’ll always do cancer charities and that sort of thing, I always did anyway, but I feel like this is my last hurrah with cancer and I can put it behind me and get on with making my next record.

As part of the The Man In Black tour, Catherine Britt will perform alongside Adam Harvey at Country Club Tasmania on Sunday, April 3 from 4pm.  The tour has played in every major city and performed in every major theatre in Australia.