LASSETER’S GOLD FIND

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28530, 8 March 1958, Page 10

LASSETER’S GOLD FIND

Story Examined By Noted Australian Explorer

[By MICHAEL TERRY, F.R.G.S., F.R.G.S.A.]

SYDNEY, March 3. T wish I could lay the ghost of H. R. R. (“Das”) 1 Lasseter and end the fable of his reef of gold in Central 1 Australia. If I could, my Territorial! friends would heave a sigh of relief and the city “suckers’’ would put their hard-won shillings to better use than backing expeditions chasing this will-o-the-vv isp. Ever since Lasseter died at Winter’s Glen, in the Petermann Ranges, some 28 years ago, it has riled inland bushmen that the area has been dubbed lhe Lasseter Country.”

Hang it all, the giants of exploration —Gosse, Giles, Forrest, Carnegie—began to unearth its secrets in the ’7o’s. Up to 1930, I had compiled an indisputable list of more than 80parties who had wandered the area, yet not one of them brought in a gold specimen. There were rumours of finds, but rumours do not pay dividends, and the Mines Department does not accept them. Yet, because it sounds like easy money, folk will back the search for a ridiculous gold reef (ridiculous in width, . richness, and length) which Lasseter told the Pitt street prospectors he had found deep in the mainland 30 years earlier. Secrecy Mania The more garbled the account, the more it involved secret plans, the more mystery* clothed facts, the greater, apparently, became the allure; so that expeditions by truck, plane and camel followed one another into the blue, R.A.A.F. planes went afield to rescue bushed “bushhoen,” police galloped into remote places to help solve situations which never should have existed. Public and private money, perhaps to the extent of £ 100,000,

has been poured down the drain —for what? To glorify a man and a nugget that no Territdrian accepts.

Many of the writers who have cashed in on this myth obviously never searched an official, historical or geological file, never studied a map in detail.

In 1930 I was in the Petermann Ranges on general search long before Lasseter and his party, and came back convinced that no gold existed there, or perhaps any useful mineral at all.

Next year, W. H. B. Talbot (Government Geologist of Western Australia) more than agreed with that, after he was taken into the region by another expedition. The whole miserable thing appears to stem from a fiction yarn

called “The Golden Buckle,* which Lasseter is supposed to have read. It dealt with gold in the Musgraye Ranges. My nearest contact with Lagseter was upon finding a marked tree near Circus Water (in the Rawlinson Ranges. 400 milef west-south-west of Alice Springe) in 1932. Slightly west, on the floor of a saltpan called Lake Christopher, we found a pole with a rag and printed with a stick underneath . . . “DIG UNDER . Alas, the last word could have been “pole” or “fire.” All the same, we met a black who took us to his camp. We dug all over the place, hoping for a message in a tin which would throw light on events. The Public Paid We found nothing. For thia curious person had a mania for buried messages, secret plans and all the trappings of hidden wealth. At that time he was alone with two camels. After the main expedition had given him up in disgust, he “went bush” with- Keith Johns, but had a row with him* threw a plate of stew in his face, and drew a gun. , Keith was not used to that kind of dinner* so he left for home. . • Eventually Lasseter was found by blacks. They volunteered to steer him to the nearest homestead, but he refused, reckoning he could get along on blackfellows’ tucker, with the result that he collapsed near Winter’s Glen, where Bob Buck says he buried him, bringing in his false teeth as evidence. Since then, however, some people say he did live, and eventually made his way to the United States. I doubt that. Now for some points about the story of the “find.” After Lasseter made his strike —the story is—he came so confused that he went west into Western Australia instead of back east to the Overland Telegraph Line. Thus he crossed alone on foot Gibson’s Desert, where Ernest Giles—to my mind, our finest explorer—lost Gibson. In a Western Australian settlement (the story is) Lasseter met Harding, a surveyor, returned to the find, and pegged it —or some thing like that. But, it is averred, Harding, supposed to be a trained man, made an error, of 200 miles in computing the position because his watch was in error. To anyone familiar with survey that is ridiculous. Further, surveyors (official or private) are registered, and Harding's name is on no list. * On top of all this, n >-one living in Central Australia about 1900, when Lasseter maimed he first went there, remember any shape or form of him. Especially in those days, no one could come or go without being observed . . . stores have to be bought, water, obtained, animals purchased, meals taken* tracks crossed. A Howling Waste Further, the names of places Lasseter mentioned in advance never coincided with those on the map. He took his expedition west from Alice Springs to the Ehrenberg Range instead of south-west to the Petermann Ranges, where popular fancy now dictates the “find” should be. Between the two places lies a howling waste, nearly all sandhills, as I know only too well (having nearly perished there). It is in fact the Pintubi tribal area, where 25 years ago I met and photographed them, being assured they never previously had met a white man. To sum up, “Lasseter’s Country” geologically is unfriendly to gold, about 500 men have searched the area fruitlessly, and Lasseter was never in Central Australia before he took his “return” party. He was a poor, misguided man whose lack of balance and execessive imagination led him to pay the price the pitiless bush demands of the new chum.—Associated Newspapers Feature Service.