Speed in the dead lake

The abortive attempt by Donald Campbell on the land-speed record n Lake Eyre in 1963 and his successful attempt in 1964, plus the hoo-hah nd publicity that went with it, bored many people. Nonetheless, English >riter John Pearson now makes a very creditable adventure story out f it, called “Bluebird and the Dead Lake”.

LARSON was a London journalist who had just published a suc ful first novel when he decided accompany Campbell to Lake e in 1964. He brings many of the ; of a novelist to the handling of factual book, taking the people • participated in the second at pt on the record and presenting n as characters, with their ngths, weaknesses and doubts. [e brings to the strange country Central Australia and the myster moods of Lake Eyre—that for t of its time is no lake at all— esh, outsider’s view that does no srvice to the area or the few tralians who inhabit it.

Jthough the main characters are Australian, it is largely an Aus an story. Elliot Price, owner of station where Campbell and his n party stayed—self-styled King Muloorina—who often emerged he time in the Australian Press TV as some sort of figure of becomes a three-dimensional out t Australian with the usual fund >ush stories. There is Maree, “the est thing to High Noon to be

found . . . outside the Middle West” and Konstantinos Sideris’ Bar Maree “. . . a long, bleak, unlovely room with shining apple-green wadis and lino-covered bar ... a large black notice beside the advertisements for Craven Filter saying: ‘lf you have not reached the age of 21 please do not order liquor as the penalty is severe’.”

And then there is the Great Aus tralian Scepticism. As the Army moves in to assist, as the newspaper men and the news photographers arrive, along with the oil company executives and the sightseers—as the delays piled up, Campbell, for many, “turned into the Englishman every Australian secretly resents”.

The tension and the doubts mount and build into the climax of the book and Campbell’s record run. Although perhaps overdramatised in parts, this is entertaining reading even for those who couldn’t care less about speed records. Perhaps it will be enjoyed even more in the United Kingdom

than in Australia.-

JT.

(Bluebird And The Dead Lake.

Collins. 28/-).