Explorers use earth to restart hunt for El Dorado

Explorers are restarting an extraordinary hunt for an Australian El Dorado that a gold-seeker first claimed to have found in 1911 - after using Google Earth to plot where they believe it stands, the Daily Mail reported.

The men from Tamworth, New South Wales, have made five trips to an area near the border of Western Australia and the Northern Territory, where it was first claimed that a gold reef was found.

Harold Bell Lasseter said in 1929 that 18 years ago he had discovered a reef buried under sand hills in the remote Gibson Desert - and received backing from Sydney financiers to find it again.

He was deserted by his companions and camels during the mission and eventually died of exhaustion and malnutrition - but still found the reef, according to his diary which was later found.

It was discovered in a cave in the Petermann Ranges, south-west of Alice Springs, and a series of expeditions in the next few years failed in their attempts to find the gold, reported The Independent.

But eight decades later there are still faint hopes that the treasure could still be located - by a team involving friends Jeff Harris and Brendan Elliott, who have wanted to find it since they were children.

They have been through Mr Lasseter's diary, which includes sketches and accounts of his last journey, and traced this by matching landmarks with features on the Google Earth maps software.

“Every mark he put in his diary, I followed it,” Harris told The Independent. “Every picture in the diary, I matched on Google Earth. I drove my missus nuts once I started working it out.

The area where the gold is believed to stand is a four-hour helicopter flight from the Aboriginal community of Warburton, the nearest inhabited area, and is 22 miles off a rough track.

Mr Lasseter's son Bob, 88, has travelled to the desert more than 10 times to search for the landmarks identified by his father - and also believes the gold exists.

“I've found the cave where he sheltered for a month or so, and the sand hill where the camels bolted,” he told The Independent. “I'd like somebody to find it before I die. To me, it's real.”