science

Lasseter's Reef

Lasseter's Reef is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Lasseter's Reef rather than just read about it. In short: Lasseter's Reef refers to the purported discovery, announced by Harold Bell Lasseter in 1929 and 1930, of a fabulously rich gold deposit in a remote and desolate corner of central Australia. Lasseter's accounts of the find are conflicting and its precise location remains a mystery—if it exists.

Key takeaways

Lasseter's Reef belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Lasseter's Reef to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Lasseter's Reef from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Lasseter's Reef refers to the purported discovery, announced by Harold Bell Lasseter in 1929 and 1930, of a fabulously rich gold deposit in a remote and desolate corner of central Australia. Lasseter's accounts of the find are conflicting and its precise location remains a mystery—if it exists.

Timeline In 1929 and again in 1930 Lewis Harold Bell Lasseter (1880–1931) made different (and possibly conflicting) claims that either in 1911 or in 1897, he had discovered a rich gold deposit. On 14 October 1929 he wrote a letter to Kalgoorlie federal member, Albert Green, claiming to have discovered "a vast gold bearing reef in Central Australia" 18 years earlier and that it was located at the western edge of the MacDonnell Ranges. He made a similar claim to other officials and was interviewed by a commissioner and a geologist, however the government took no action to investigate the claim. It was revealed that from 1908 to 1913 Lasseter lived on a lease-hold farm near Tabulam. In March 1930, he provided a different story to John Bailey of the Australian Workers' Union. In this claim Lasseter details that as a young man of the age of 17, he rode on horse from Queensland to the West Australian gold fields, during which he stumbled across a huge gold reef somewhere near the border between the Northern Territory and Western Australia. However Lasseter had been sentenced to reform school at that time for armed robbery. According to the story told to Bailey, Lasseter was about 700 miles (1,100 km) west of Alice Springs in a line towards Kalgoorlie. He claimed that subsequent to this discovery he got into difficulties and was fortuitously rescued by a passing Afghan camel driver who took him to the camp of a surveyor, Joseph Harding. Harding and Lasseter were said to have later returned to the reef in the attempt to fix its location, but failed because their watches were inaccurate. As the expedition with Harding dated in the years before World War I, the two different versions about the finding of the reef could have been unconflicting; it is possible that Lasseter did refer sometimes to his first finding in 1897 and sometimes to the first expedition with Harding. According to Lasseter, he spent the next three decades trying to raise sufficient interest to fund an expedition into the interior. But at the time the fortunes being made from the gold rush at Kalgoorlie in Western Australia meant that no-one was prepared to risk trekking into the uncharted desert wilderness of central Australia, even if the supposed discovery was as rich as he claimed.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Lasseter's Reef

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Lasseter's Reef claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Lasseter's Reef before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Lasseter's Reef ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Lasseter's Reef

In research: Lasseter's Reef appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Lasseter's Reef in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Lasseter's Reef is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1930s in the Northern Territory, Australian folklore, Australian gold rushes, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Lasseter's Reef outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Lasseter's Reef in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Lasseter's Reef means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Lasseter's Reef out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Lasseter's Reef in simple terms?

Why does Lasseter's Reef matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Lasseter's Reef?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Lasseter's Reef.