South Australia's Lake Eyre rains on Donald Campbell's 1960s hopes for world record beyond his 403mp/h
A crowd of about 200,000 greets Donald Campbell along King William Street, Adelaide city, in his Bluebird that had clocked up 403 miles per hour on South Australia's Lake Eyre (with clouds overhead) in 1964.
Images courtesy Primotipo
Donald Campbell became the fastest man on the planet in his Bluebird CN7 Proteus on South Australia’s Lake Eyre salt at 8.10am on July 17, 1964, reaching an average of 403.1miles per hour (648.7 kilometres per hour) with back-to-back passes in opposite directions near Muloorina Station.
The Englishman became the first man to break the 400 mile per hour limit in a wheel-driven vehicle. About 200,000 people – 100,000 fewer than those that saw the Beatles during the concert visit a few weeks earlier – saw Campbell drive Bluebird down King William Street, Adelaide, after his feat. But Lake Eyre hadn't been as kind to Campbell.
When he first decided in 1961 to use the lake, it hadn’t seen rain for nine years. By 1963, rains had flooded to several inches and it never fully dried out for the 1964 attempt.
The son of world speed records holder Malcolm Campbell, Donald Campbell decided on Lake Eyre after he crashed in a world speed attempt on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, United States of America, in 1960. His sponsor BP offered to find another venue and Lake Eyre was chosen after a long search. It hadn't rained there for nine years and the vast dry bed of the salt lake offered a course of nearly 20-miles (32 km).
By summer 1962, Campbell’s Bluebird CN7 had been belatedly rebuilt with an additional large stabilising tail fin and a reinforced fibreglass cockpit cover.
Low-speed runs on the lake had started when the rains came and, by May 1963, Lake Eyre was flooded to a depth of three inches in unprecedented weather.
American Craig Breelove drove his pure thrust jet car Spirit of America to 407.45 miles per hour (655.73 kilometres) at Bonneville in July 1963 but it didn't conform to Federation Internationale de L'Automobile regulations that the vehicle had to be wheel-driven and have a minimum of four wheels.
Campbell returned to Australia in March 1964, but the Lake Eyre course failed to fulfil the early promise it had shown in 1962 and there were further spells of rain. BP pulled out as his main sponsor but Campbell secured backing from Australian company Ampol.
The Lake Eyre track never properly dried out but, in July 1964, Campbell posted speeds that approached the record. On July 17, he took advantage of a weather break and made two courageous runs along the shortened still damp-track at 403.10 miles per hour (648.73 kilometres per hour). Campbell was bitterly disappointed with the record as the vehicle had been designed for much higher speeds.
Campbell lost his record soon afterwards when regulators decided to open the record to any vehicle running on wheels. But he became the first man to break both the land-speed and water-speed records when he clocked 276.3mph (444.7km/h) at Lake Dumbleyung near Perth in his Bluebird K7 boat on December 31.
On January 4, 1967, on his return run at England’s Lake Consiton, Campbell’s Bluebird K7 boat flipped at about 528km/h, instantly killing him.
