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Few people understand speed and salt better than Marlo Treit. At 87 years old, the Canadian-born veteran of salt lake racing this month returned to Lake Gairdner to once again test his mettle against some of the fastest vehicles on dry land in the world.
Lake Gairdner is Australia’s home of salt lake racing. Each year the Dry Lakes Racers Australia Speed Week attracts about 230 racers from across Australia and as far afield as US and UK. To the untrained observer, the range and diversity of vehicles might better resemble a gathering in Wacky Racers: from the high-expense, high-octane “streamline” and “Belly tank” (former B-52 fuel tanks) classes to the more fashionable, vintage hot rods and low-expense, back yard bashed-up postie bikes. There are hundreds of classes of vehicles.
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Competitors and support crews enter Lake Gairdner in the early morning for the day’s racing
This motley assembly is not in pursuit of monetary gain; the fastest on the salt wins neither cheque nor trophy, only bragging rights in their quest for speed.
Treit and his 20-strong support team are racing the Target 550 – a monstrous 13-metre-long, 4 tonne land speed car with twin supercharged engines. The streamliner is nearly four decades in the making. Sitting in the team’s trackside tent, the sturdy 162cm-tall silver fox of the salt recalls, with astounding clarity, a race in 1959 when, aged 21, he won his first land speed record in a motorcycle he built in his parents’ garage.
“I have had over 200 races on salt flats and in that time, I’ve had 20 serious accidents, but luckily walked away with superficial wounds – you know, cuts and bruises.”
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Target 550 owner and financier Marlo Treit
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Target 550’s shipping container after a day of racing
As Treit’s racing life evolved, he moved from motorcycles to cars, then on to streamliners.
“Once I rolled my car at 250mph [400km/h] and the whole damn thing came apart,” he says. His eyes dart trackside following a streamliner as it hurtles down the 14.5km course. His gaze comes back to me in earnest. “I shouldn’t be alive.”
Lake Gairdner is an endorheic salt lake 160km long and 48km wide north-west of Adelaide. When it is full, it is considered the third-largest lake in Australia. But today it is a dry white expanse of salt. In the late 1980s, hot rodders Andy Jenkins and Mike Davidson, inspired by the dry racing events in Utah, went on an exploratory mission to find somewhere to run high-speed races in Australia. Eventually they came across Lake Gairdner – now one of only three dry lake race tracks of its type in the world (the others are in Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia, and Bonneville, Utah). Dry Lakes Racers Australia held their first land speed trials in March 1990 and have continued, weather permitting, for the last 34 years.
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Matt ‘the Postie’ Sheppard and fiancee, Laura Hodgson, with his 1974 CT 90 postal bike
Standing trackside by the racing pits awaiting sequestration to the start line is Matt “the Postie” Sheppard. He is accompanied by his support and fiancee, Laura Hodgson. She holds a broad golfing umbrella aloft to keep him cool in the rising temperatures as he prepares for a record run on his 1974 CT 90 series postal bike.
“I love making things, thinking up silly ideas and making them work,” he says.
He began racing on Lake Gairdner in 2021 and like many others in the salt racing community, kept coming back.
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A motorcycle rider heads to the start line
“The majority of people here are dreamers and tinkerers,” he says. Sheppard and Hodgson collapse in the shade of their tent, exhausted from the blistering summer sun. But they are both ecstatic. Sheppard achieved a personal best of 127.2km/h and the official speed record for a postal bike of 124.9km/h. (Official records are made by averaging the speed of two runs.)
“That’s 44.5% faster than they were claimed to go, coming off the factory floor!”
Asked what the future holds for his CT 90 postal bike, Sheppard sits upright. “I’ve been talking with some drag guys about some modifications to increase its RPMs and I reckon that I can get it up to 85mph [137km/h]. If I can manage that, then that would surely be pushing its threshold.”
Climbing into the cabin of his Nascar, an American stock racing vehicle, on the final day of racing is Mooroopna man Leo Darveniza. He is accompanied by fellow Wombat team driver and elder, Noel Heenan. Darveniza is after a personal best that will deliver him his 280km/h licence.
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Wombat Nascar team driver Leo Darveniza (right) with fellow driver and support Noel Heenan
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Darveniza pulling away to make his 280km/h licence
Due to the dangers of high-speed salt lake racing, competitors must earn incremental speed licences, proving that they are capable of one level before advancing to the next. For instance, they must demonstrate they can safely and successfully drive at 240km/h before being permitted to drive at 280km/h and so on.
Darveniza awaits the go-ahead by race starter Harry De Ree. As the driver sits at the wheel, Heenan leans into the window to give some last-minute advice.
Soon though, Dee Ree gives the thumbs up and Darveniza starts to pull away. Heenan, in a support vehicle, races down a parallel track. Before he reaches anywhere near the collection point, at the 4.5km mark, Heenan’s thumb goes into the air as the race caller announces on UHF radio: Darveniza reached a maximum speed of 280km/h.
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Race starter Harry De Ree
Darveniza’s run ended in just over a minute. Through the shimmering heat haze in the distance, the racer can be seen coming to a halt, his parachute deployed. “You haven’t really got that much time to think as it’s all over very quickly,” says Darveniza after the run. “It’s all very exhilarating.”
He got his new licence.
