Lasseter S Cave

It's hot, remote, desolate and dangerous - and about as deep into the infamous Australian outback as anyone would dare to venture. An eminent neurosurgeon and his family, on the holiday of a lifetime, are shot dead, their shattered bodies left to the ravages of the desert sun and carrion-eating wildlife. Detective Inspector Russell Foley and his best friend, Detective Sergeant Sam Rose, are sent into the heart of the legendary Harold Lasseter, "Lost Reef of Gold" country, to investigate the brutal murders. But is it Gold Fever, the twisted mind of a deranged killer protecting that which he believes is his... or something else entirely?

It's hot, remote, desolate and dangerous - and about as deep into the infamous Australian outback as anyone would dare to venture. An eminent neurosurgeon and his family, on the holiday of a lifetime, are shot dead, their shattered bodies left to the ravages of the desert sun and carrion-eating wildlife. Detective Inspector Russell Foley and his best friend, Detective Sergeant Sam Rose, are sent into the heart of the legendary Harold Lasseter, "Lost Reef of Gold" country, to investigate the brutal murders. But is it Gold Fever, the twisted mind of a deranged killer protecting that which he believes is his, or something else entirely? This is the large print edition of Lasseter's Cave, with a larger font / typeface for easier reading.

The Lasseter legend is well known in Australia, or at least it was when I was a younger man. The story goes that a man named Harrold Lasseter whilst journeying across the desert from Alice Springs to the west coast around 1900 reportedly discovered a fabulously rich reef of gold. Nothing was done about the discovery until many years later in the 1930’s when Lasseter mounted an expedition to relocate the fabulous reef, an expedition that resulted in his death and no reef. Since that time many people have ventured into the desert in search of the reef with no success. This book details a geologists quest for the reef and his own fabulous gold find which become embroiled in criminal conspiracy and action. Of course the hero geologist triumphs and a World class series of gold mines is established. It should however be noted that the author believes that Lasseters gold reef never existed.

It's hot, remote, desolate and dangerous - and about as deep into the infamous Australian outback as anyone would dare to venture. An eminent neurosurgeon and his family, on the holiday of a lifetime, are shot dead, their shattered bodies left to the ravages of the desert sun and carrion-eating wildlife. Detective Inspector Russell Foley and his best friend, Detective Sergeant Sam Rose, are sent into the heart of the legendary Harold Lasseter, "Lost Reef of Gold" country, to investigate the brutal murders. But is it Gold Fever, the twisted mind of a deranged killer protecting that which he believes is his, or something else entirely?

It's hot, remote, desolate and dangerous - and about as deep into the infamous Australian outback as anyone would dare to venture. An eminent neurosurgeon and his family, on the holiday of a lifetime, are shot dead, their shattered bodies left to the ravages of the desert sun and carrion-eating wildlife. Detective Inspector Russell Foley and his best friend, Detective Sergeant Sam Rose, are sent into the heart of the legendary Harold Lasseter, "Lost Reef of Gold" country, to investigate the brutal murders. But is it Gold Fever, the twisted mind of a deranged killer protecting that which he believes is his, or something else entirely? This is the large print edition of Lasseter's Cave, with a larger font / typeface for easier reading.

It's hot, remote, desolate and dangerous - and about as deep into the infamous Australian outback as anyone would dare to venture. An eminent neurosurgeon and his family, on the holiday of a lifetime, are shot dead, their shattered bodies left to the ravages of the desert sun and carrion-eating wildlife. Detective Inspector Russell Foley and his best friend, Detective Sergeant Sam Rose, are sent into the heart of the legendary Harold Lasseter, "Lost Reef of Gold" country, to investigate the brutal murders. But is it Gold Fever, the twisted mind of a deranged killer protecting that which he believes is his, or something else entirely?

It's a tale that doesn't seem like it would be a winner; an improbable proposition of a ten-mile reef of gold in the middle of the continent, a cabal of scheming investors, a farrago of poor planning and preposterous publicity, the fiasco of the prematurely celebrated triumph of technology over unforgiving terrain, a dead prospector - and no gold. The Central Australian Gold Exploration Company had it all, and Lasseter's Last Ride was in the stores before the final chapter of the real-life debacle had closed. It was a runaway success. Angus and Robertson sold three million copies of Ion Idriess' sixty-some books before he died in 1979. But in 1931, as he was working on what would be Lasseter's Last Ride, he was looking for an angle. In filling the gaps between the few facts with detailed descriptions of lands and people he had never seen, he found it - and promoted it - in Magic and Mystery. Idriess' fictional account of the last months of the life of Harold Bell Lasseter gave birth to a legend that has repeated in dozens of books, films, poems, podcasts, websites and exhibitions, is memorialised in the names of a highway and a casino, and has spawned searches and scams that continue nearly a century later. Idriess was probably surprised at its success and chose not to tamper with a winning formula when inconvenient material soon emerged. To do that he had to control the evidence and continued to insist on his narrative's unimpeachable adherence to fact. Reef Madness exposes how Idriess confected his first successful book and why the story of a failed prospector became a quintessentially Australian myth.

A killing. A hidden history. A story that goes to the heart of the nation. When Mark McKenna set out to write a history of the centre of Australia, he had no idea what he would discover. One event in 1934 – the shooting at Uluru of Aboriginal man Yokunnuna by white policeman Bill McKinnon, and subsequent Commonwealth inquiry – stood out as a mirror of racial politics in the Northern Territory at the time. But then, through speaking with the families of both killer and victim, McKenna unearthed new evidence that transformed the historical record and the meaning of the event for today. As he explains, ‘Every thread of the story connected to the present in surprising ways.’ In a sequence of powerful revelations, McKenna explores what truth-telling and reconciliation look like in practice. Return to Uluru brings a cold case to life. It speaks directly to the Black Lives Matter movement, but is completely Australian. Recalling Chloe Hooper’s The Tall Man, it is superbly written, moving, and full of astonishing, unexpected twists. Ultimately it is a story of recognition and return, which goes to the very heart of the country. At the centre of it all is Uluru, the sacred site where paths fatefully converged. ‘Mark McKenna has exposed the wounded heart of Australia. Never has a history of our country so assumed the power of sacred myth. Return to Uluru is a spellbinding story of death and resurrection that is Australian to its core.’ —James Boyce ‘Mark McKenna sets the highest standard for truth-telling of the kind that Australians so urgently need if they are to live in this country with honour. I feel sure that this book will become an Australian classic, not the first of its kind, but certainly the most powerful narrative I have read of frontier injustice and its resonance in our lives today.’ —Marcia Langton