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LANGFORD SMITH, KEITH (1907–1981), missionary, was born at Wahroonga, New South Wales, on 2 January
1907, a son of the Reverend Canon L E and Mrs Langford Smith of Sydney. He was educated at Trinity Grammar
School, Sydney, Hurlstone Agricultural High School, and at the Metropolitan Business College, Sydney.
Langford Smith, accompanied by Kenneth Griffiths, spent the two years from May 1928 until June 1930 as a
missionary in training for the Church Missionary Society (CMS) at the Roper River Mission, enabling R D Joynt
to take his furlough. On his return to Sydney, Langford Smith secured his flying certificate and in April 1931
purchased a Gypsy Moth aeroplane (VH–UJ V). Now a full CMS missionary he flew the plane to the Roper Mission
arriving there in July 1931. He then set about the task of exploring air routes and places where Aborigines as yet
untouched might be reached by plane. Later he was able to report that he had flown a total of 22 530 kilometres
in Sky Pilot.
Langford Smith also had forward-looking ideas regarding missionary training. He said that they should
have a knowledge ‘of the native language’, of ‘his laws and customs’, and ‘of his beliefs, myths which form the
psychological background which is very real to him’.
After several years, he became a central figure in a controversy at the Roper River Mission. He overspent
in supplies and for his aeroplane and was censured by the CMS. This was followed by serious allegations of
misconduct made under privilege by H G Nelson, a Member of Parliament for the Northern Territory from 1922
to 1934, which led to a government board of inquiry. The board comprised E T Asche, Crown Law Officer for
the Northern Territory, Dr C E Cook, Chief Protector of Aborigines for the Northern Territory, and the Reverend
C H Nash, appointed by the CMS. The board heard evidence at the Roper River Mission for a period of 17 days
during May 1933. Neither the evidence nor the board’s report was made public. The CMS dismissed Langford
Smith after the hearing, but later issued a public statement saying that ‘not at any time has Mr K Langford Smith
been charged by any of its committees with any moral misconduct and dissociates itself from any imputations
which may have been made against Mr K Langford Smith’s moral character’.
Langford Smith subsequently wrote two books about his work at Roper, called Sky Pilot in Arnhem Land and
Sky Pilot’s Last Flight. Langford Smith later started the Marella Mission Farm at Kellyville in New South Wales
for part-Aboriginal children. For many years, he conducted a radio session on 2CH known as ‘The Sky Pilot’s
Log’. He was invested with the A M (Member of the Order of Australia) in 1977 in recognition of fifty years’
service to the Aborigines. He died in Sydney on 29 September 1981.
K Cole, Roper River Mission 1908–1968, 1969; K Langford Smith, Sky Pilot in Arnhem Land, 1935; K Langford Smith, Sky Pilot’s Last Flight,
1936; House of Representative Debates, vol 142, pp 4118–21; AA, NT, and ACT Branch, Canberra; CMS records, Melbourne.
KEITH COLE, Vol 1.LASSETER, LEWIS HUBERT (HAROLD BELL) (1880–1931), gold-seeker, was born on 27 September 1880
at Bamganie, near Meredith, Victoria, second son of English parents William John Lasseter, labourer, and his
mother Agnes, nee Cruickshank, who died when he was young. Lasseter’s boyhood and youth are obscure but he
later claimed to have served in the Royal Navy and to have been discharged in 1901. He then went to the United
States of America where, describing himself as a labourer, he married Florence Elizabeth Scott at Clifton Springs,
New York State, on 29 December 1903.
About 1908 Lasseter returned to Australia, worked in a variety of jobs in New South Wales and dabbled with
a number of inventions that he attempted to patent. In 1913, he drew a sketch for an arch bridge over Sydney
harbour. In Melbourne in 1916, describing himself as a ‘bridge engineer’, he enlisted in the Australian Imperial
Force only to be discharged eight months later as medically unfit. Undaunted, he re-enlisted the following year
in Adelaide only to be again discharged unfit shortly after. On 28 January 1924 describing himself as ‘Lewis
Harold Bell Lasseter, bachelor’, he married Louise Irene Lillywhite, a nurse, at Middle Park Methodist Church,
Melbourne. The Lasseters moved to Sydney where he found work as a carpenter and finally as manager of a
pottery. In September 1929, he publicly claimed to be ‘the original designer’ of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and
unsuccessfully sought payment for six months’ work on the design.
Possessing a predilection for approaching those in authority, Lasseter, claiming this time to be ‘a competent
surveyor and prospector’, wrote to A E ‘Texas’ Green, Federal Member for Kalgoorlie, on 14 October 1929 outlining
what he called an ‘out of the ordinary suggestion’ to develop the mining, pastoral and agricultural industries of the
Centre. He claimed that 18 years previously he had discovered ‘a vast gold bearing reef in Central Australia’ which
over twenty-two kilometres assayed three ounces to the ton and which could be developed with an adequate water
supply and capital of 5 million Pounds. Lasseter offered to survey an 800-mile (1287 kilometre) pipeline route
from a projected dam in the headwaters of the Gascoyne River in Western Australia to the reef for 2 000 Pounds.
He sent a copy of his letter to the Western Australian Minister for Mines and suggested that the Federal and Western
Australian governments share the cost of the ‘flying survey’. In Sydney in November Lasseter was interviewed by
(Sir) Herbert Gepp, chairman of the Development and Migration Commission, and geologist Dr L Keith Ward who
were sceptical of Lasseter’s reef, which he vaguely located about 400 kilometres west-south-west of Alice Springs
near the western end of the MacDonnell Ranges. The government took no action.
In dire financial straits by March 1930, Lasseter, claiming to be ‘a qualified ship’s captain’, approached
John Bailey of the Australian Workers’ Union in Sydney and told him of his find—this time 33 years previously
when he was 17. Travelling west from the MacDonnell Ranges, he said, his horse had died near Lake Amadeus
and a surveyor named Harding who took him through the Gibson Desert to Carnarvon, Western Australia, whence
they returned three years later and relocated the reef rescued him. In subsequent interviews with Fred Blakeley,
Errol Coote, Charles Ulm and others the story varied in detail and naturally aroused some suspicion; nevertheless