What happened to Lamont Young? The Mystery of the Bermagui Five

The boat was recovered in Mystery Bay, but where were the five men? Source: Stefano Garau / Adobe Stock.

In 1851, a prospector and homesteader in New South Wales in Australia noticed something interesting in a waterhole near where he was working. Amidst the muddy water were tiny flecks of metal, shining golden in the sun.

Within a year, hundreds of thousands of hopefuls had flocked to the area to seek their fortune, and the great Australian Gold Rush was on. Many struck it rich in the gold fields of Australia, and many more lost everything in the harsh and dangerous world of the “diggers”.

The gold rush barely lasted a decade, and while gold would still be found in the area for the next 50 years it required more sophisticated techniques to find and extract. Official oversight was provided by the New South Wales Mines Department, and their teams of surveyors.

One such surveyor was a young man named Lamont Young, who was tasked by the Mines Department to investigate potential new gold fields in Bermagui, almost 100 km (62 miles) south of Sydney on Australia’s Sapphire Coast.

Young led a party to survey the new fields in October 1880. What happened to the men has been a mystery ever since.