Overview

In the bitter autumn of 1932, as the world crashed into the Great Depression, Australian motor ace Norman 'Wizard' Smith sat on the remote Ninety Mile Beach in far north New Zealand, waiting for the wind to change; waiting for a chance to drive his streamlined super car the Enterprise to a new world speed record. He would be the fastest man on earth - a golden god! He waited and waited ... Norman Smith was an enigma. A contemporary of Bradman, Kingsford Smith and Phar Lap, he was dumpy and shy. But when he got behind the wheel he became the Wizard, his command uncanny, the speeds breathless. In league with engineer Don Harkness, who designed and built the Enterprise, he was pointing Australia toward a brighter future. Until somewhere along the line, things started going wrong. What really happened on that lonely beach? Clinton Walker lays bare the tragic fall from grace of Norman 'Wizard' Smith - an ordinary man lost to an extraordinary quest, and, until now, a forgotten figure.

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9781862549500

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Clinton Walker is a writer Sydney's Sun-Herald has called 'our best chronicler of Australian grass-roots culture'. An art school drop-out and recovering rock critic, he was born in Bendigo in 1957, and is the author of numerous books, including: Inner City Sound, his 1981 debut on the Australian punk uprising, finally back in print in 2005; Highway to Hell (1994), his internationally acclaimed, best-selling biography of Bon Scott; Football Life (1998), a personal history of minor league Australian Rules; Buried Country (2000), the highly regarded secret history of Aboriginal hillbilly music; and Wizard of Oz (2012), on the last ride of Wizard Smith.

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