LASSETER’S GOLD
$38.00
When Harold Bell Lasseter disappeared in late 1930 it could have been the end of a mystery. Thirty-three years earlier he had staggered out of the desert, almost dead, his pockets bulging with gold, claiming to have found a 15 kilometre gold reef. The mystery deepened when he and a surveyor returned to the isolated and mysterious ranges where the reef was supposed to be located. It became legendary when the largest inland expedition since Burke and Wills was launched.
In LASSETER’S GOLD, Warren Brown vividly recreates the drama of the search – the characters, the fights, the soaring temperatures, the impossible terrain, the plane crash, the pistol-carrying dingo-skinner who appeared out of nowhere. And just who was this man Lasseter? A one-time sailor, a bigamist, a man who claimed John Bradfield stole his plans for a single-span bridge to cross Sydney Harbour – was he also a very, very good liar?
LASSETER’S GOLD is the gripping story of an outback legend. Is it just a myth – or is there really a massive gold reef out there, just waiting to be discovered?
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Description
It seems almost everyone who became involved in the search for Lasseter’s Reef had an agenda, and indeed greed and paranoia flourished under the desert sun. Reading this absorbing account, I was reminded of the classic 1940s Humphrey Bogart film The Treasure of Sierra Madre, in which a combination of harsh environment, distrust and greed produce explosive conflict among a motley group of prospectors.
Lasseter’s Gold deserves to be made into a feature film and would make for an edgy outback noir. It certainly provides an excellent companion piece to Luke Walker’s superb recent documentary Lasseter’s Bones, which concentrates on the ongoing efforts by Lasseter’s 90-year-old son to find his father’s reef.
Given the sheer isolation, the physical difficulty of moving through the mulga country, and Lasseter’s vagueness about the location of the gold, which meant the 1930 expedition had no clear direction to follow, it is a wonder the whole enterprise did not disintegrate much earlier than it did.
As Brown notes, the story of Lasseter’s Reef has “many moving parts”. Several key people involved in the expedition seem to have been duplicitous if not downright malevolent in intent.
Additional information
| Weight | .470 kg |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 23.5 × 15 × 2.5 cm |
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