THE GOLDEN QUEST.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20988, 26 September 1931, Page 9 (Supplement)

THE GOLDEN QUEST.

A PIONEER'S FATE Kipling's poem, " The Explorer," with its burden of " something lost behind the ranges," gives the most matter-of-fact stay-at-home reader a glimpse into the spirit of the pioneer, an echo of the whisper that ceaselessly assails his ear and sends him away from prosaic and comfortable safety to face uncertainty—discomfort and danger —and when that whisper carries with it the magic word " gold," then many a mart is content to spend his life in the search. But in Australia to-day such men are given all the assistance they require. The discovery of a. new goldfield might solve tho country s troubles, and from the forbidding hinterland of Central Australia come persistent rumours of goldfields as rich as Ballaiat or Coolgardic. " Lassetcr s Last Ride describes the latest attempt to wrest from nature her well-guarded secret, and though the expedition ended less than a year ago in failure and tragedy, already another big expedition has been formed to continue tho search.

Some thirty years ago a prospector, L. H. B. Lassetcr* looking for rubies on the Macdonnell Ranges, stumbled upon a rich gold reef. Then, trying to return, ho was lost in tho desert, found by an Afghan camel-driver clutching a bag of golden specimens, and carried to a surveyoi s camp. When Lassetcr recovered his ncrvo lie and Harding, the surveyor, located the reef, but on returning to Carnarvon found , that their watches were wrong and the bearings taken were consequently incorrect. At the time, the West Australian gold rush was at its height and nobody was anxious to finance an expedition to so remote and barbarous a legion. In 1916 the West Australian Government sent out several camel expeditions to locate the reef once more, but they suffered casualties at, the hands of hostile blacks and wore forced to return. So time went on and Australia s financial crisis helped Lasseter to realise his dream, and the Central Australian Gold Exploration Company was floated to tiy again on a more ambitious scale. _ It is the story of this expedition which is told by Mr. lon Idriess, himself an explorer in the . wilds of Northern Australia. _ A six-wheeled ton truck was put into uso with an aeroplane, " lhe Golden Quest," to co-operate. The prospecting party included Captain Blakiston-Houston, A D.C. to Lord Stonehaven, ex-Governor-General of Australia. The adventures of the lorry are vividly described, but despite its sturdy construction, it reached sandstone country like the bed of a driedup sea, which no machine constructed by man could hope to cross. So once more Lasseter had recourse to camels, and, with one companion, he set out on what was to prove his last expedition. The final dash Lasseter made alone with two camels, and the record of it was found later by one of the men who wont out to look for him. It is a terrible story of success—for he found his reef again—turned into disaster. His camels broke away and the prospector, wandering on foot in an almost waterless waste, fell in with a tribe of aborigines. The fragments of letters found tell of the hostility of the natives, with the exception of one old man, who befriended him, and of the gradual breaking down of his health front heat and privation. It is a story almost as moving as that of Scott and his comrades, but the pioneer spirit, to which the author dedicates his book, never dies, and one day success will crown the efforts of some man, not more daring, but more fortunate, than his predecessors. 'A new goldfield, and possibly—for there is much good country besides the desert—a newState will be opened up. When that day dawns it is to be hoped that the work of the pioneers will not be forgotten. " Lasseter's Last Ride," by lon Idriess. (Angus and Robertson.)