Lewis Hubert (Harold Bell) Lasseter

Who was 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, and commonly described as eccentric and opinionated. He travelled in both Australia and the United States and worked at a variety of occupations, marrying twice and fathering five children.

Lasseter was made famous by his sensational claim, first asserted in 1929, that, as a young man, he had discovered a fabulously rich gold reef, an entity now known as “Lasseter's Reef”, in central Australia.

He perished in the desert near the Western Australia–Northern Territory border in early 1931 after he separated himself from an expedition that was mounted in an effort 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. It was later re-interred in the Alice Springs cemetery.

However, the book Lasseter Did Not Lie by A.