Two gold nuggets worth $350,000 found in Australia
Two gold nuggets worth around A$350,000 (£190,000; US$250,000) have been discovered by a pair of diggers in southern Australia.
Brent Shannon and Ethan West found the nuggets near goldmining town Tarnagulla in Victoria state.
Their lucky find was shown on TV show Aussie Gold Hunters, which aired on Thursday.
The men dug up the ground and used metal detectors to detect gold in the area.
“These are definitely one of the most significant finds,” Ethan West said, according to CNN. “To have two large chunks in one day is quite amazing.”
They found the nuggets, which have a combined weight of 3.5kg (7.7lb), in a number of hours with the help of Mr West’s father, according to the Discovery Channel which airs the programme.
The show, which is also broadcast in the UK, follows teams of gold prospectors who dig in goldfields in remote parts of Australia.
“I reckoned we were in for a chance,” Mr Shannon told Australian TV show Sunrise. “It was in a bit of virgin ground, which means it’s untouched and hasn’t been mined.”
Mr West said that during four years of mining for gold, he is picked up “probably thousands” of pieces.
The Discovery Channel also said collectors could pay up to 30% more for the nuggets than their estimated value.
In 2019 an Australian man unearthed a 1.4kg (49oz) gold nugget worth an estimated A$100,000 (£54,000; $69,000) using a metal detector.
Gold mining in Australia began in the 1850s, and remains a significant industry in the country.
The town of Tarnagulla itself was founded during the Victoria Gold Rush and became very wealthy for a period of time when keen prospectors moved there to make their fortune.
The discovery of the world’s largest gold nugget is being remembered 150 years on.
Two Cornish miners found the huge nugget dubbed the Welcome Stranger while prospecting in the gold fields of Victoria, Australia on 5 February 1869.
It weighed 11 stone (72kg) and was 61cm long (24 inches) when it was found buried just below the surface.
Descendants of John Deason and Richard Oates who were paid just under £10,000, are gathering at the spot it was found.
As part of the celebrations is a themed play in full period costume, and a photo taken at the time has been recreated using the relatives of the two men.
plete with the crowbar
“It is a great story of two guys instantly becoming fabulously rich. In those days that didn’t happen,” said John Tully from the Goldfields Historical Society.
“Nowadays we have things like the Lotto where people can become millionaires overnight, but back then it didn’t happen like that.”
as Queen Victoria made an appearance at the celebrations in Australia
Suzie Deason, 38, is the great-great-great-granddaughter of Mr Deason and still lives in the area.
She said: “When people hear my name they always ask me where the gold is, or if I am rich.
Unfortunately I am not, and we haven’t even got any jewellery made from the Welcome Stranger.”
In the 1850s and 1860s, Moliagul – where the nugget was found lodged in the roots of a tree – was a booming gold rush town with 11 pubs.
Nowadays it is largely a farming community, no shop, no hotel and a handful of houses, but gold speculators are still drawn to the area, known as the Golden Triangle.
Mrs Deason said: “People travel here to try their luck and spend days and days trying to find their fortune. There are still some reasonable sized nuggets around but nothing like the Welcome Stranger.
“We call it gold fever. It’s an illness, an addiction to finding gold.”
In the 1850s thousands of people travelled to Victoria, Australia in search of their fortune, as part of the Victorian gold rush.
They came from across Australia and around the world, and for most of them great wealth was never achieved.
But for two Cornish miners, fortune did come calling on 5 February 1869.
John Deason was born on Tresco in the Isles of Scilly, but moved to Pendeen in west Cornwall as a one-year-old after his fisherman father drowned.
This is where he met Richard Oates, and both are recorded in the 1851 census as working the tin mines of Cornwall.
Mr Deason emigrated to Australia in 1853, with Mr Oates going a year later to begin life as prospectors or “diggers”.
In 1862 they arrived in Moliagul and after seven years of getting by, and making a living, the two men struck gold.
On a slope called Bulldog Gully, an enormous piece of gold encased in quartz was buried just below the surface.
It was so big, that as Mr Deason wrote “I tried 6to prise the nugget up with the pick but the handle broke. I then got a crowbar and raised the nugget to the surface”. -enacted for crowds
They took it to the town of Dunolly, about 12 miles (20km) away, where it was weighed at the London Chartered Bank.
A report in the Dunolly & Bet Bet Shire Express on 12 February 1869 stated: “We are glad that the monster has fallen to the lot of such steady and industrious men”.
The nugget was immediately broken up, partly because it was too large for the scales, before a model could be made, or photographs taken.
A drawing was made based on the memory of those who saw it, and there is now a replica in the Dunolly Museum.
If sold today it is estimated the nugget would fetch more than £2m, and it would probably have significant prestige value.
