The Richard Jackson Saga: Book 14: What's Under? Down Under. by Ed Nelson

Author:Ed Nelson [Nelson, Ed]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-10-06T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 27

My guide told me that my flying had been a good idea. Lasseter Road from Alice Springs was a terrible road. He went on to tell me that the road was as crazy as old man Lasseter himself.

“How crazy is he?”

“He dead now, buried out in the desert while on one of his wild chases to find the quartz outcrop which he claimed held millions in gold.”

“Would you tell me what you know?”

“The story comes up in the newspaper every couple of years. It always seems to change a little, so take everything with a grain of salt.”

“Lasseter claims that as a seventeen-year-old he discovered this huge gold find somewhere west of Alice Springs. It could be anything from one to seven hundred miles west. This would have been either 1897 or 1911. That right there makes the whole story suspect.”

“It was thought to be on the western edge of the McDonnell Ranges. He reported it to officials sometime after 1913 but no action was taken. Since he had been in a reform school when he was younger, they probably didn’t believe him.”

“In 1930 he retold the story to a member of the Australian Workers Union. In this telling, it was somewhere near the border of the Northern Territory and Western Australia.”

“Sometime after 1897 he got in trouble in the desert and was rescued by a passing Afghan camel driver! He was taken to a surveyors camp run by Joseph Harding.”

“Harding and Lasseter returned to the reef to fix its location but couldn’t do it. Later they claimed it was because their watches weren’t accurate enough.”

“Lasseter then spent the next three decades trying to raise interest in funding an expedition. As you can see the timeline is a mess and the location keeps changing.”

“Finally in 1930 when the Great Depression was at its height, he secured around 50,000 pounds in private funds towards an expedition. It included motorized vehicles and aircraft. This was unusual for the time. It should have been camels and mules.”

“The expedition was accompanied by experienced bushmen, prospectors, engineers, explorers, and a pilot.”

“Lasseter was sullen and uncooperative for some reason. The group had many logistical difficulties including the loss of an airplane. Finally, Lasseter declared they were one hundred and fifty miles too far north. The exasperated bushman leader stated the Lasseter was a charlatan and ended the expedition. They parted with Lasseter at llbilba.

“Lasseter and a dingo-shooter along with a team of camels continued. Lasseter, whose behavior was increasingly erratic set off towards the Olgas.”

“One afternoon he returned to camp with concealed rock samples claiming he had found the gold reef. The dingo-shooter who now doubted Lasseter’s sanity called him a liar. A fight ensued and Lasseter was left to his own devices.”

“The dingo-hunter returned to ‘civilization,’ and Lasseter trudged off with two camels. Later a search for Lasseter was conducted by a bushman who found Lasseter’s emaciated body at Winter’s Glen and his personal effects in a cave at Hull’s creek.”

“From Lasseter’s diary, it was found that after the dingo-hunter left the two camels bolted.

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