IN 1995 Rosco McGlashan became the fastest Australian in history with his Aussie Invader II land speed record car after clocking 1,013.55 km/h on Lake Gairdner.

At the time it was faster than anyone else on earth had gone on four wheels.

During the return run, seven kilometres of the track had deteriorated due to water, but McGlashan kept the throttle pinned anyway. The end result? A destroyed car, obliterated timing gear, and no record. This is how McGlashan recalls that day.

u201cWe went faster than the world record on our northbound run, and we knew we could go even quicker in the other direction,u201d he recalls to Wheels.

“The wheels work like water jet cutters at those speeds, it just cut the car to bits with the pressure coming off the wheels.

“But doing 1000km/h, you have no context for the sheer speed you are travelling at. You are sitting on the salt, with a marker barrel every kilometre down the course, and a black line you are trying to follow because you wouldn’t know where you were without a black line on the salt.

“You put that line where you want to have it in comparison to where you want the car to be running, get start clearance, fire the car up, and what I do is pull away by about 10 metres, then put the full jet engine burner on like a drag racing car and hit it hard.

“The biggest sensation of it all is driving a car over the curvature of the earth. If you haven’t been on a salt lake, the hardest thing to describe is you are standing on the salt and looking at the horizon over the curvature of the earth. If someone is three kilometres away, you couldn’t see them.

“When you are going that quick it feels like you are looking over a hill. You really know you are moving fast. In Aussie Invader II we pulled 4G, and I lifted my bum out of the seat. I would get out of the car and my neck would be killing me, I thought ‘Geez, I have been drag racing all my life and it’s not the G, I don’t know what is going wrong’.

“If you had to go that fast on a race track you’d shit yourself with all the trees and what not whizzing past.”

McGlashan remains adamant to this day that he would have broken the world record on his return run if he hadn’t gone off course, obliterating timing gear which was placed 180-metres from his intended path waiting to measure his speed.