Lasseter's Reef
A prospector claimed he'd once seen a reef of gold in the Australian desert. He died looking for it, and no one has found it since.
What was reported
In 1930 Harold Bell Lasseter claimed that decades earlier, lost in the desert of central Australia, he had stumbled on a reef of gold stretching for kilometres. At the height of the Great Depression, he persuaded investors to fund an expedition to find it again.
The expedition broke down, and Lasseter went on alone with camels into the Petermann Ranges. He died there in 1931, leaving a diary of his ordeal.
Explanations offered
Many doubt the reef ever existed, or think Lasseter misremembered or exaggerated. Searches have continued for decades without success, and the story became one of Australia's best-known legends of lost treasure.
- When
- Expedition in 1930
- Where
- Petermann Ranges, Northern Territory, Australia
- Witnesses
- Harold Lasseter, by his own account
- Status
- Never found
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.