Lassater's Reef

Harold Bell Lassater's story of a rich gold discovery has all the ingredients that needed to make romance grand scale, and which so stir the minds of people that they become part of their tale-telling heritage. This short, rugged bushman was found unconscious, far to the south-west of Alice Springs, by an Afghan camel-driver one day in 1897. He was taken to the camp of a surveyor, and when he had sufficiently recovered from his ordeal in the burning wastes of the Centre, he told of a fabulously rich reef of gold which he had discovered somewhere out beyond the Petermann Ranges. As proof of his claim he showed the surveyor some very promising specimens of rock he had brought with him from his El Dorado. Lassater refused to disclose the exact location of the reef. Several years later, when he tried to get financial backing for an expedition, he met with no success because the Kalgoorlie diggings occupied the minds of most gold-seekers. In 1911 he did manage to raise funds for a trip into the dreaded no-man’s-land where the gold lay, but the hazards of the journey turned his party back.

The years passed, but the dreams of returning to his reef were rarely out of Lassater’s thoughts. In July, 1930, his dream looked like becoming reality. Depression had hit Australia. The lure of gold, however inaccessible, once again spurred many an adventurous men. Subscribers put up £5,000 and there was no shortage of equipment, including a six-wheeled lorry and a plane. An experienced bushman, Fred Blakeley, was appointed leader of the party, which included a prospector, an engineer, an explorer, an air pilot, Fred Colson - a man with years of experience in the Inland and Harold Lassater.
Leaving Alice Springs with high hopes, the expedition soon ran into serious troubles, both physical and mechanical. The truck was nearly burnt, the first plane crashed and had to be replaced. But the biggest and possibly most gravest disappointment suffered by the party came with the announcement by Lassater, after climbing to the summit of Mount Marjorie, that they were off course and should have been about 150 miles further south. After incredible hardships, the party reached a decision not to proceed any further. At Ilbilba they said goodbye to Lasseter, who was determined to press on.
"If I don’t find the reef I’m never coming back", were his last words. Accompanied by Paul Johns, Lassater set out with a few camels in the direction of Mount Olga. Johns became alarmed at the increasing strangeness of his companion’s behaviour. A showdown came one day when Lassater, returning to camp from a short prospecting trip, said that he had at last found his reef. He was secretive and refused to disclose its location. "You’re a liar!", charged Johns.

Lassater threw some food at him, and then drew a revolver. There was a skirmish and the two men fought until they were exhausted. Paul Johns had no further desire to remain in the company of a man whom he now looked on as half-insane and an impostor. He set off back to civilization, leaving two camels for Lassater’s use. The rest of this story of the ill-fated quest was only pieced together when the Central Australian Bushman, Bub buck, and a team of black-trackers set out to look for Lassater. They found, written in the hot sands, the last chapter of a remarkable tale. Lassater had been followed by a number of wild natives. His camels had bolted. The natives, hostile towards this inferior person who was unable to live off the land as they did, nevertheless spared his life and allowed him to accompany them. But weakness and sandy-blight blindness prevented him from keeping up with them, and he had crept into a cave at Winter’s Glen to die. Bob Buck found his body. Beside it were a set of false teeth and a revolver. Nearby, beneath a tree marked with the word DIG, was found a tin containing some of the dead man’s papers.

Others searched for Lassater’s Reef, but the shimmering desert wastelands have failed to reveal its whereabouts. Was there ever such a reef? For most of us there is always the tantalizing thought that no man would risk his life, and the lives of others, searching for something as petty as a mirage. There must, surely, be some truth in his claim. Bob Buck through that he might have been foiled by poor man’s quartz because he had once pegged out a claim on tons of it, at the place where his body was found.
The ‘Lassater Legend’ has grown in the years since 1930. And like all legendary figures, Lassater himself refuses to die. There are those who have seen him, since 1930 (the supposed year of his death), in an Oregon seaport, and those who say that, far from perishing in Central Australia, he became a preacher to Mormon congregations in Salt Lake City.
In the Truth Paper (Melbourne 24 November 1956) the front page story was headed

"LASSATER ALIVE!"

and was followed by these opening paragraphs:
‘Sensational police action this week indicates, almost with certainty, that Lassater, the man who was believed to have died in Central Australia in 1930 while seeking a supposedly fabulously rich gold reef bearing his name, is alive!
The new police inquiries suggest that Lassater is not only a fraud, the perpetrator of one of the most amazing hoaxes in modern history, but also a bigamist. Top ranking detectives were this week following a trail which they believe will lead them to Lassater, who they say, is living under another name in the United States.’

Despite such stories, there seems to be no doubt that the remains of Lassater were, in fact, buried by Bob Buck at the scene of the prospector’s death in 1931; and that they were the same remains which were exhumed by members of a film-making party late in 1957 and brought to Alice Springs, where they were finally buried in June, 1958.

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