You rekkon ?
By ninemsn staff
A
Darwin businessman is claiming to have discovered the Holy Grail of Australian gold mining in a remote location west of
Alice Springs.
Lutz Frankenfeld, who founded the Northern Territory's Beer Can Regatta, told the Northern Territory News he is in negotiations with a mining company to excavate the legendary gold deposit.
The businessman claims he found the reef by retracing
the steps of Harold Lasseter's final attempt to find the gold.
"There are a lot of major landmarks to find before you can consider it the area — and we've found all of those,'" he told the newspaper.
The fabled reef legend began when Lasseter, at the age of 17, attempted to walk from
Alice Springs to the West Australian goldfields. Along the way he claimed he had stumbled upon — and subsequently lost — a fabulously rich gold deposit. He spent the following years trying to raise interest in his discovery, but died searching for the lost reef in 1931.
At least 13 expeditions have unsuccessfully attempted to find the lost treasure since Lasseter first spotted it in 1897.
No maps pointing to the fabled reef were ever found, and the gold mystery has achieved mythical status among central Australians.
Now Frankenfeld says he has found the gold deposit, almost 500km west of
Alice Springs on the Western Australia border. He says it is often hidden by sand after flooding.
Frankenfeld said he has Central Land Council permission to
mine the site, rumoured to be seven
miles long, four to seven feet high, 12 feet wide and "bulging" with gold.
But Lasseter's grandson Robert Lasseter Jr said Frankenfeld is just one of many people who have claimed to have found the reef.
"My mum had a fellow on the phone last night from New Zealand who claimed he found it,'" he said, adding that he does think the reef exists. "Some day someone will find it."
Darwin historian Peter
Forrest believes Lasseter made up the story.
"I haven't been given any information to make me change my mind ... but I have been wrong before,'' he said yesterday.