In 2011, Sydney band Boy & Bear were living the great Australian music dream: Their debut album reached platinum sales, they won five ARIAs - including Album of the Year - and three of their songs placed in triple j's Hottest 100.

Led by frontman Dave Hosking, Boy & Bear would spend the next four years making two more studio albums, selling out shows, playing festivals, and touring the world.

While 2011 marked Boy and Bear's first year of extraordinary success, it's also the first year Dave remembers getting sick.

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Whatsapp Dave Hosking in 2014

At first the weakness and fatigue, as Dave calls it, only happened about once a month. Nothing was unusual, the GP told him.

Two years on, after recording the band's second album Harlequin Dream, the occasional weakness and fatigue was becoming more frequent, intense, and disorienting. At one point Dave couldn't understand what his bandmates were saying to him. In the studio, he was having trouble finishing off lyrics.

"I felt a sudden sense of disconnect and out-of-body [experience]," Dave told Hack.

"It was almost as if someone pulled a glass door in front of me and everything stopped being clear.

It was really from that point on that things just felt off, as if the world was on a slight tilt and I had somehow slipped into some glass bubble.

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Whatsapp Dave Hosking.

While Dave spent the next two years touring - in 2014 the band played 150 shows - and recording Boy & Bear's third album, he grappled with increasingly volatile and unusual symptoms. Along with being diagnosed with anxiety and depression, Dave describes a state of confusion, discomfort, and mental lag - almost as if things were "glitching in real time", he says.

After the band's third record was in the bag from a recording session in Nashville, Dave was eager to get home.

It was 2015, and it would mark the beginning of the toughest two years of his life.

"Time seemed to slow down, light seemed to hurt my eyes and all noise started to feel like piercing sirens. I was confused, stressed, isolated and becoming trapped in a neurological hell where every day felt like a week long.

"No one knew what was going on and ironically, I looked completely normal."

Professor Kerryn Phelps finds a long-awaited answer

Armed with an increasingly long and obscure list of physical and psychological symptoms, Dave hopped from specialist to specialist in search of a diagnosis. Nothing seemed to fit, and no treatment worked.

Pain and discomfort was defining Dave's life, and a solution was becoming urgent.

You kind of go, I'm not scared of death, I'm not scared of dying, I'm scared of pain.

"I need to somehow find some comfort sooner rather than later because this is not a sustainable way of existing on a daily basis."

Professor Kerryn Phelps - the one-time federal member of Wentworth, elected following the resignation of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull last year - began treating Dave in 2015, and found a clue that would eventually lead to a diagnosis.

"Professor Phelps finally stumbled across a substantial abnormality," Dave says. The culprit lay in his gut, where Dave showed signs of chronic dysbiosis.

"My gut bacteria was in a fairly severe state of imbalance. They know roughly certain balances we're supposed to be in for normal health, and mine were upside down. So that's where my gastro journey began."

Turning to fecal matter transplants

The excitement of finding an answer to Dave's ill health was met with another problem: treatment.

"After a failing attempt at antibiotics and probiotics I overhauled my diet with some professional advice - cutting all sugar, including fruit, all grains, caffeine, alcohol and dairy.

I lived on a diet of vegetables and protein for a year but barely moved the needle.

Meanwhile, Dave was still touring with the band, experiencing a life he says was a "living hell".

Soon Dave met gastroenterologist Professor Thomas Borody who would give Dave more answers and, crucially, treatment.

"He suspected that what was causing my symptoms wasn't necessarily the dysbiosis but an unknown bacteria that was potentially poisoning my nervous system by producing neurological toxins. My symptoms and story was by no means uncommon at the clinic."

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Whatsapp Dave Hosking in 2019

To fight this unknown bacteria, Dave began faecal microbiota transplants, also known as FMT.

It's not pretty - it literally involves infusing someone else's healthy poo via an enema inserted in the anus - but it gave Dave something he hadn't felt in years: relief.

For the first time in over two years it felt as if my nervous system had been turned down a notch.

The FMT provided relief, but created another problem: FMTs at a clinic are prohibitively expensive - about $700 per session - and he needs them every day.

"The clinic then taught me how to perform the treatment myself and I was to continue the infusions for 6-12 months. It was at this point where my relationship with poo was to change forever."

Introducing the 'poo roadie'

By 2018, Dave was becoming used to his routine. He'd set up a home 'lab' to conduct the daily infusions, and arranging a "pick up" from his donor Harry - who lives a short drive away - was as simple as a text message.

Harry, who answered Dave's call out via a letterbox drop to a few hundred homes in his area, even set up a dedicated poo-only freezer in his garage for his donations.

Harry was just happy to help out, he told Hack, and was glad to see Dave get better.

Then I saw an email with the subject line, 'poo roadie'," Harry says.

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Whatsapp Harry and Dave.

Dave had been getting so much of his old life back that he was making music again. Boy & Bear now had plans to record their fourth studio album.

Great news for Dave and the band, but there was one problem: Dave would still need his FMTs while they recorded in Nashville for a few weeks.

And when Dave needs FMTs, he needs Harry.

Dave says he didn't want to "pressure" Harry into agreeing to join them on their recording trip.

"But there kind of was a lot riding on it," Dave says.

That's how Harry, a guy from the Northern Beaches of Sydney who met a five-time ARIA award winning artist via a letter asking for his faecal donations, ended up on a plane to Nashville.

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Whatsapp Dave and Harry.

Dave isn't fully better yet - he says he still "has problems"- and the benefits of the FMTs have plateaued over the last little while.

"It's still a clunky process at times but I've learnt to just stay instinctual, be expressive be honest and follow what feels good.

"In amongst a very functional need to be able to write and work, the band has also been an incredible distraction to what has been a difficult reality.

"It has allowed me to find pleasure in simply creating again and even on those days where I could barely talk, I could still mumble some melody into the microphone and enjoy their company."

Next week, fans will be able to hear new music from Boy & Bear for the first time in four years, ahead of their upcoming album.

Dave says it's partly thanks to Harry - who has a "strange but integral" role in the crew.

"I would never have guessed he'd come to Nashville and do all of that," Dave says. "It's kind of cool. I just appreciate all of his support."