Throughout my early teen years, my family followed a regular Friday routine that, today, feels distinctly ancient. Every week after dinner, my mother, brother and I would dawdle for 20 minutes down quiet suburban streets to the entertainment haven that was the video rental store. If we had been well behaved, the ultimate treat: free rein to rent a film of our choice.

My mum rarely vetoed our selection, so we watched a wild range; but it was an unassuming family comedy starring child actors Kristen Stewart and High School Musical’s Corbin Bleu that would change my life for ever.

Released in 2004, Catch That Kid tells the story of three kids who rob a bank to pay for Stewart’s father’s expensive surgery. I often describe the film as “The Italian job, but for preteens”. There are all manner of shenanigans but, most importantly, the heist is successful and the trio escape on go-karts.

It was this element of the film – not the duplicitous declarations of love Stewart makes to both boys to convince them to help, not the love of climbing that caused her father’s injuries in the first place – that really caught my eye. I remember the moment vividly: sandwiched between my distractible brother and bored mother on the couch, in awe at Stewart and her two loverboys screaming away in fast little machines, surrounded by piles of money. I want to do that, I thought. More than anything else in the world, I wanted to drive fast.

With all the self-importance of a 13-year-old making a declaration about the rest of their life, I told my mum: “I am going to become the first black, female, Muslim Formula One driver.” This was pre-Lewis Hamilton, of course. “OK,” she replied. “After you go wash the dishes …” My parents were certain that this was a phase. But somehow, it wasn’t. I read every single book about cars in the local library, I stuck posters up of 1963 Corvette Sting Rays and McLaren F1s on my walls.

We didn’t have the money for me to be an actual driver, so I made the pivot into design. At university I studied mechanical engineering, running the uni race-car team and graduating with first-class honours. I was selected for an exclusive master’s in motorsport at a university that fed straight into the elite teams. A life in F1 was beckoning. It was all systems go!

Except, I had failed to achieve what Stewart had so elegantly accomplished – leaving the scene with a lot of money. Formula One is not for the small bank-accounted. An offer of work experience at Mercedes F1 had to be turned down because I didn’t have the funds to cover months of unpaid work. The fees for the course, plus board, was A$50K. In lieu of robbing a bank, what’s an engineering girly to do?

It was then that I dug out the email address of a man I’d met at a careers fair in my early years of engineering. I’d been attracted at the time by the profession he was advertising: the adventure; the idea of taking a helicopter to work; and the paycheck wasn’t shabby, either. In the interview, the manager seemed nervous. “You know, we don’t have any other women field specialists. Are you going to be OK?” I shrugged, with the arrogance of a 20-year-old who had no idea what she was getting into: “I’ll be fine!” How hard could working on the oil rigs be?

Working on the “patch”, as those in the know refer to the oilfield, is not for the fainthearted. The hours are demanding, and in the roles I was in – a measurement while drilling (MWD) specialist, then drilling engineer – you are on call, expected to drop everything when you’re needed and paid to work for as long as the job requires.

I worked both onshore, in the Australian desert, and offshore, in the Indian Ocean. Hitches – the length of time you’re away from home – could range from a couple of weeks to a couple of months. Shifts were typically 12 hours, but if you’re on a well from hell, as I sometimes was, you’re up and problem solving for up to 20 hours at a time; why worry about something as insignificant as sleep when an idling rig costs a million dollars a day to run, and everyone is waiting on you to solve the problem holding operations up?

But there was something that kept drawing me back. The thrill of a helicopter out to the platform, the technical challenge of hitting a six-and-a-half-inch target thousands of feet underground, the isolation and the pressures and the unfathomable dangers that were part of the day to day. For four or so years, the adventure was intoxicating.

But it was not to last for ever, and I would eventually leave oil rigs for a career as a writer. Still, I will always be grateful to Stewart and her boys for introducing me to a world that I would never have discovered any other way. And while I may never have made it on to the racetrack, I certainly still love being behind the wheel.