LASSETER'S "REEF"

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXX, Issue 4872, 18 July 1936, Page 2

LASSETER'S "REEF"

A MYTH EXPLODED. PROSPECTING ROMANCE. "Lasseter's lost reef," said to contain immensely rich gold deposits, has become almost .legendary in the story of Australian gold prospecting, but the latest report of an official geologist indicates that the "myth" has been dealt a final blow. Searches for Lasseter's reef go back nearly 15 years, when the prospector Lasseter set out in the Macdonnel ranges, lured by stories of rich ruby deposits. He found the rubies to be worthless garnets. When lost in the desert, near the eastern border of Western Australia, Lasseter stumbled on what he thought to be a reef, and filled an oatmeal sack with samples. With Harding, a Government surveyor, he returned to this reef, and, so the story runs, traced it for some miles. Lasseter's story of rich gold deposits were responsible for the Western Australian Government sending two fruitless expeditions, neither of which could reach the site of the supposed reef. In 1930 Lasseter was one of an air expedition which attempted to locate the reef. On a subsequent attempt to reach his reef, Lasseter perished in the desert, an attempt made famous by lon Idriess in his book "Lasseter's Last Ride."

Since then romantic stories of the richness of Lasseter's lost reef have fired mining men and others to search for it. Two expeditions recently left Sydney, and one of them, sent out by a Sydney syndicate and headed by Messrs. Cutlack and Hammerston, reported that it had located the reef from the air. The Western Australian Government geologist Mr. A. A. Ellis) was thereupon sent to inspect the area. The supposed "reef" was described by Mr. Ellis as a "sandstone ridge in the middle of barren sandhills, with no quartz or likely looking country » for 100 miles." The position of the ridge was 50" miles from the border, in the Carnarvon Range, and 70 miles north-west of Livingstone Pass. "The Cutlack expedition was out for three weeks," repoi'ted Mr. Ellis. It was a party supposed to be going out to a "very rich gold reef, yet the object of the party seemed to be to pass the time conveniently. It had ample supplies of everything except for mining. There was no prospecting material."