FAQ's

Frequently Asked Questions and Notes.

RECOMMENDED WEB SITES

Australia's National Archives holds a surprising amount of Lasseter material. Use the Guest search facility and just enter 'Lasseter'. Must reads are the digital copies of his military record and the Gepp Report, file No. 30/512.

One of the best sites of it's kind, that Lasseter and C.A.G.E. had this facility in 1930 they may have been able to relocate those missing landmarks, go exploring for yourself. Place Name search recommended.

'The Flight of Ducks' is a very large, thoughtful and sometimes controversial site based on the journey of a young scientist through Central Australia in 1933. Bookmark this site for the superb digital copy of Lasseter's Diary.

Interesting Australiana with letters and Lasseter articles, a succinct overview of the Lasseter saga by Graham Seal in issue 2 and 'Ruby's Story' in issue 6 written by Lasseter's daughter.

Download Ernest Giles 'Australia Twice Traversed', for many years the handbook for explorers and travellers to Central Australia. Especially those areas later known as Lasseter Country.

"Australian history is always picturesque. Indeed, it is so curious and strange that it is itself the chiefest novelty the country has to offer, and so it pushes the other novelties into second or third place. It does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies, and all of a fresh new sort, not the mouldy old stale ones. It is full of surprises, and adventures, and incongruities, and contradictions, and incredibilities, and they are all true."

MARK TWAIN.

LASSETERIA is an online version of an encyclopedia and commentary and occasional apocrypha on Harold Lasseter and the search for that fabulous gold reef. The encyclopedia is written for those who have read Lasseter's Last Ride or Hell's Airport or perhaps Dream Millions, or any of a dozen or so books and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles written on one of Australia's most enduring frauds and legendary characters.

You may have wondered what happened to Paul Johns, the last whitefellow to see Lasseter alive. If he were living in Tennant Creek why has he never been persuaded to retrace his steps with Lasseter??, the answer is surprising and not entirely pleasant. And if you have read Coote's Hell's Airport you may have puzzled over Coote and Taylor landing the Golden Quest in Marree's Ghantown on 21/7/30; yet common history has the first C.A.G.E. expedition leaving Alice Springs the same day !?!. The answer is in Lasseteria.

Lasseteria is a work in progress of about 300 indexed entries on most things relating to Harold Lasseter, his colleagues, both C.A.G.E. expeditions…..and a few others, events and incidents that have some bearing on the search for Lasseter's Reef. A number of entries are not yet completed for wont of 'hard evidence' (with no apology to Coote) or a cold trail, Lasseter's enigmatic letter to the Japanese Emperor is a case in point…so far.

Sullivan, the Author of Lasseteria makes no apology for setting history straight or total disbelief in the existence of any gold reef out there in Lasseter Country. Much of the Lasseter legend is recycled history based on just three sources and only one of them is reasonably creditable but seldom cited in the original. The books by Idriess and Blakeley on the C.A.G.E. expeditions are quite unreliable as source material, one is 'faction' and the other fellow didn't keep a log book.

So a finer and wider net was cast and the fishing was excellent, Lasseter left a wide trail through state and national archives, John Bailey's version of the search for Lasseter's Reef came to light in the Mitchell Library and the Captain, god bless him, left his memoirs in a London military archives, the complete history of the Golden Quest, a poignant story, is available from the National Archives, there too can be found the documents that probably started Fred Blakeley and his mates on the way to Central Australia in mid July 1930.

The many truths out there are much stranger than the fiction that passes as lean speculation and authoritative comment on the search for the reef or the fellow who started it all, but then Lasseter's shade might not be so disappointed with the outcome, he earned legendary status and became an established part of Australia's folk lore.

LASSETERIA