Mike Appleyard and Lee Freer star in a TV show that tackles the 100 year-old mystery of Lasseter’s Reef
Mike Appleyard set up Drone Inspections WA having left his hometown of Cleethorpes 17 years ago.(Image: Drone Inspections WA)
Two men have found themselves at the centre of an Indiana Jones-esque quest to discover a fabled gold deposit in remote Australia. In the late 1800s, Harold Bell Lasseter is said to have happened upon a rich seam of gold, somewhere in the inhospitable terrain of central Australia.
The prospector and adventurer only announced the find in the late 1920s, and took all clues towards its whereabouts to his grave when he died alone in the outback in 1931. Over the years, there have been expeditions to find the lost treasure, with a TV crew most recently following explorers on its trail.
And “Hunting Outback Gold” – which broadcasts in the UK on U this Thursday, February 19 – stars Mike Appleyard and Lee Freer, who grew up about 10,000 miles away in the Humber region. The pair, who are now based in Western Australia, were called on for their expertise in drones which have used to survey vast swathes of outback territory.
Mike, who emigrated from Cleethorpes in his mid-20s before settling in the country, set up Drone Inspections WA (DIWA) several years ago with Lee, from Grimsby. The pair – who are also joined in the business by another Grimbarian, ex-search and rescue specialist James Bethell – are more used to surveying mine sites using technology such as ground penetrating radar and light detection and ranging (LiDAR).
But producers for the show sought them out in the hunt for the supposedly 20km long Lasseter’s Reef, leading to an action-packed adventure in the outback. And more than their fair share of insect bites.
Mike Appleyard, from Cleethorpes, and Lee Freer from Grimsby, star in the Hunting Outback Gold series.(Image: Drone Inspections WA)
“The show centres around these two guys Jeff and Brendan who are treasure hunters – and they’ve been looking for this elusive thing since they were kids by trekking out into the bush,” explained Mike, who has remained tight-lipped about the success of the trip.
He added: “This guy wrote the coordinates down to where the gold reef was and people tried to track them back. They thought he’d used military coordinates, swapping them around. That’s why we’re in the Northern Territory near the Queensland border because we’re using the opposite coordinates.”
The team had to endure inhospitable conditions on the border between the Northern Territory and Western Australia.(Image: Drone Inspections WA)
The Drone Inspections WA team spent time in the Australian outback with a TV crew as they attempted to solve a 100 year-old mystery.(Image: Drone Inspections WA)
Mike and Lee, who despite their roots first met at party in Australia, found themselves in some of the remotest parts of Australia with nobody around for hundreds of kilometres. Some of the filming locations required two-day drives, all off road.
The pair are used to similar conditions, often doing work in places such as the the scorched, sparsely populated Pilbara region. Though this trip did bring its challenges as Mike joked: “The flies were just absolutely insane, I’ve never known anything like it. It was terrible.”
Lee Freer is managing director of Drone Inspections WA.(Image: Drone Inspections WA)
DIWA used its kit to read terrain, and gather aerial data to make ground searches smarter and safer. The results of their efforts can be seen in the six-part series from Prospero Production who used historic sources and clues from the rich and colourful life of Harold Bell Lasseter to stage a two-month shoot which retraced Lasseter’s final expedition in the early 1930s.
Mike added: “It is not every day you see Grimsby lads turning up in a brand-new UK series, let alone one centred on an old outback mystery where modern drone technology is being used to help locate historical leads and hard-to-access search areas.”
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