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Review: Finding ‘Australia’s Lost Gold’ proves elusive

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The intriguing documentary “Australia’s Lost Gold” sets out to get to the bottom of the legend of Harold Lasseter, a prospector who died of starvation in the harsh Central Australian desert in 1931 shortly after purportedly discovering the mother lode in a quartz reef that has never been located.

But the deeper director Luke Walker digs, the further he seems to be from getting a handle on the man whose exploits have often been recounted in print, on film and even in song.

Using Lasseter’s 80-year-old diary as his guide, along with Lasseter’s tireless son, Bob, now 87, who has spent his life in search of the grouping of hills resembling “three women in sun bonnets” said to contain the phantom booty, Walker commences his ambitious quest.

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Poring through shelves and shelves of historic archives and talking to those who knew people who knew Harold Lasseter, the filmmaker attempts to retrace Lasseter’s ill-fated journey — one that places him in the vicinity of a sacred Aboriginal location that might have prevented Lasseter from reaching his objective.

The film, like Walker’s trek, occasionally feels like a bit of a slog to those unexposed to the folklore, but it makes some interesting observations in regard to the pursuit of fact over fiction. At its most absorbing, Lasseter’s story plays like an Aussie “Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” in which the main subject is a bit of a cypher whose true nature proves to be as difficult to pinpoint as that elusive gold.

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‘Australia’s Lost Gold’

Not rated

Running time: 1 hour, 41 minutes

Playing: Arena Cinema, Hollywood

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