Lewis Hubert (Harold Bell) Lasseter

Lewis Hubert Lasseter, or Lewis Harold Bell Lasseter as he later referred to himself, was born on 27 September 1880 at Bamganie, Victoria, Australia. Though self-educated, he was literate and well-spoken, but commonly described as eccentric and opinionated. He traveled in both Australia and the United States and worked at a variety of occupations. He married twice and had five children. Lasseter was made famous by his sensational claim, first made in 1929, that as a young man he had discovered a fabulously rich gold reef, a proposition now known as “Lasseter's Reef”, in central Australia. Lasseter perished in the desert near the Western Australia – Northern Territory border in early 1931 after he separated himself from an expedition that was mounted to rediscover the supposed reef. His body was found and buried in March 1931 by Bob Buck, a central Australian bushman and pastoralist sent to search for Lasseter, and was later re-interred in the Alice Springs cemetery.

----

You should also read the book, "Lasseter Did Not Lie" which provides irrefutable evidence that Lasseter was no more than a con-man, having ripped off his investors in a clever scheme to convince investors that such a gold reef existed, only to take their money with him to Sanfrancisco where he later died in the late 1950s. His surviving son Bob Lasseter now agrees that his father was a fraud.

----

Quick Facts
* Lasseter had said that when he was in Alice Springs the first time, around the time of discovering the gold, he had posted a letter at the post office in the middle of the town. However, at the time, the post office was not in the town, which was actually called Stuart back then, but located on the other side of the ranges some 6 kilometres away at a water hole which was called Alice Springs.
* At the time when Lasseter claimed he was first in Alice Springs, he would have been in the town when it's population was only a few hundred, and visitors came many weeks apart. Claiming he arrived with his horses and camels in tow, with only one place where he could have bought such provisions and nobody remembered him.
* Gold specimens found in pockets of body alleged to have been Lasseter were chemically analyzed and determined to have originated near Kalgoorlie, 1000's of kilometres away.
* Jimmy Nosepeg, aboriginal tracker assisted Bob Buck find the body said body was so decomposed, "could have been a black fellow (aboriginal)"
* Bob Buck, a poor laborer, died with large cash reserves.
* There were 3 separate investment companies in his gold exploration, but none of those companies knew of the existence of the other two.
* Modern technology with magnometers, geological mapping, satellite imagery, seismic testing and remote sensing show that it is geologically impossible for gold to have ever existed.formed in the areas where Lasseter claimed it was.

Other things named after Lasseter

*Lasseter’s cave, Northern Territory
*Lasseter Highway, Northern Territory
*Lasseter’s Hotel Casino, Alice Springs, Northern Territory
*Lasseter. Michael Naismith's Rotweiller dog.

References

* [http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A090678b.htm Australian Dictionary of Biography – online version]
*LASSETERIA. The Lasseter Encyclopedia. http://www.lasseteria.com