Out in the Western Desert, somewhere past Alice Springs, sits a reef of pure gold. Harold Bell Lasseter saw it in 1897, marked the spot, made it back to civilisation, and tried to come home with a syndicate behind him in 1930. He died trying. The map was real. The diary was real. The reef was the size of an outback football pitch. Somewhere out there, under the spinifex, are millions in gold waiting for someone with the right co-ordinates and the will to keep going.
There is no reef. There has never been a reef. Lasseter's diary contradicts itself, his stated co-ordinates point at country with the wrong rock type for an alluvial gold deposit, and the geology of the area is volcanic and metamorphic in patterns that don't produce the kind of surface gold he described. Twelve major expeditions have searched between 1930 and the 2000s, including one with ground-penetrating radar. None have found anything. Lasseter himself was a known fantasist with a track record of unreliable claims, his original 1897 trip almost certainly didn't happen at all, and his death in 1931 was from starvation in country that doesn't even hold gold-bearing geology. The story persists because it is a perfect Australian myth: a lone bushman, a lost fortune, a grim death in the red centre. The geology says no. The history says no. The map points at sandstone.
Reception
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Sources
- Australian Geographic: Lasseter's Reef REFERENCE
- Wikipedia: Harold Lasseter REFERENCE