Lasseter's Gold

**Lasseter's Gold** is the 11th episode in Season 3 of Expedition Unknown.

## Plot Synopsis

Josh Gates sets off deep into the Australian Outback, following the footsteps of legendary explorer Harold Lasseter, who claims to have found a vast field of gold.

## Historical Context

"As a young man, Lasseter claims to have seen a massive outcropping, or reef, of gold deep in the Australian Outback. Years later, in 1930, he assembles a team to relocate the treasure but the expedition seems cursed from the outset and ends with Lasseter being left to die in the desert."

- Josh Gates

## Summary

Josh goes to Sydney, Australia and meets Warren Brown at the State Library of New South Wales. Warren shows him Lasseter's diary and the next day they catch a flight to Yulara and meet Clive Scollay, their guide, at Uluru. They drive into the outback to Lasseter's Cave and then take camels farther into the outback in search of the gold reef. They find a small water hole and a billy tin as well as other rusted remains of an old campsite. As they continue on they find a quartz reef and fools gold.

Josh heads to Alice Springs and sees Harold Lasseter's final resting place. At a steakhouse, Josh meets Bill DeCarli, an explorer. Bill explains that Lasseter never found the reef but a man named Joseph Harding did instead. Harding told Lasseter the story on his death bed and Lasseter searched for it in the wrong area. The reef is supposedly between Alice Springs and Carnarvon. However, people have been searching the Carnarvon in the west instead of the one in the east. Josh and Bill go to where Bill has seen the quartz reef in the east and Josh finds small pieces of gold inside some of the quartz there.

## Final Words

"Mark Twain once wrote that Australian history does not read like history but like the most beautiful lies. While that may apply to the story of Harold Lasseter's lost reef, you can't deny that I'm standing on rock-solid proof that Bill DeCarli's interpretation of the clues has led to gold in the Outback but since it's on private land, we don't know how much is here or when it will be excavated. I came to Australia on an expedition but found myself on an odyssey across a mythic landscape filled with the unknown. My passionate guides and I followed the trail of a character as mysterious as his treasure. Renaissance man or con man, either way, he's undeniably Australian, a dreamer, who, like the country itself, forged his destiny through passion and sheer determination. In the end, we don't know for sure if the gold Lasseter claimed to find is in the east, the west, or just in his own mind, but as long as the legend of Lasseter's Reef endures in a place as wild as the Outback, I'd say anything is possible."

- Josh Gates

## Notes & Trivia

* *This is where you can put notes and trivia, anything that is interesting or strange can be included here*

## Quotes

* "After six hours of sand, singing, and more sand -"
* "What's a swaggie?"
* "What's a swagman? This is going to go a hundred levels deep."
* "The Never Never? I need, like, an American to Australian English translation dictionary."

## References

1. ↑ https://travel.home.sndimg.com/content/dam/images/travel/fullrights/2017/3/4/TEXU308H\_Lassters-Gold\_251438\_912949.1464867.jpg.rend.hgtvcom.966.725.suffix/1491594003709.jpeg