The gold nugget discovered by two Englishmen over 100 years ago in Victoria weighs up to 72 kg, measuring 0.6 meters long and nearly 0.3 meters wide.
In February 1869, two English prospectors, John Deason and Richard Oates, were searching for gold in central Victoria, Australia. They struck something hard just beneath the surface. When Deason crouched down to inspect the large rock blocking their path, he discovered it was a massive gold nugget. This is the largest gold nugget ever found, measuring 0.6 meters long and nearly 0.3 meters wide, according to Interesting Engineering.
Expert John Tully holding a model of the gold nugget “Welcome Stranger”. (Photo: Rachel Buckley)
Deason and Oates were excited but needed to hide the gold nugget securely before making it public. They waited until sunset. In the dark, Deason and Oates dug out the gold nugget and brought it back to Deason’s tent. They placed it over a fire to burn off the dirt and break apart the black quartz surrounding the nugget. The nugget was roasted throughout the weekend, and by Monday morning, about 31.8 kg of broken black quartz was sent to a local ore mill for processing, yielding 1.7 kg of gold. The remaining gold nugget was transported to the town of Dunolly, 14.5 km away.
In Dunolly, Deason and Oates took the gold nugget directly to the bank to avoid being robbed. However, the nugget, named “Welcome Stranger”, was too large to be weighed on the bank’s scale, so they had to push it in a wheelbarrow to a local blacksmith to divide it into three pieces. Deason and Oates sold 66 kg of gold to the bank, keeping the rest for themselves. There are various reports about the weight of the gold nugget, but the most common figure is 72 kg.
The bank paid £9,563 for the gold purchased. According to John Tully, the president of the Goldfields Historical Society in Dunolly, this amount was equivalent to the average worker’s salary over 43 years. After the discovery, Deason continued to mine gold and became a store manager in Moliagul. He lost much of his wealth due to failed investments. Deason bought a small farm near Moliagul and spent his later years as a farmer. Meanwhile, Oates returned to England, got married, and later returned to Australia, where he had four children and lived on a 324-hectare farm until his death.
During the gold rush in Victoria, Moliagul was a thriving town with a population of 16,000. Today, the community mainly engages in farming, with sparse housing, but gold prospectors still flock to an area known as the Gold Triangle. This 9,400 km2 area has produced some of the largest gold nuggets in the world. At a site called Canadian Gully in Ballarat, miners discovered three large gold nuggets weighing 61 kg, 42 kg, and 38 kg in 1853. Eighteen months later, a group of nine miners found the Lady Hotham nugget weighing 44 kg. Subsequently, in 1858, a 69 kg gold nugget nicknamed the “Welcome Nugget” was also discovered in Ballarat. To this day, it remains the second-largest gold nugget in the world. Authorities report that over 1,300 gold nuggets weighing 500 g or more have been mined from the Victoria goldfield, of which 400 nuggets weigh over 2.8 kg.
In Victoria, most of the gold underground is found within quartz reefs. Formed 400 million years ago, these hard quartz reefs containing gold can extend for kilometers but are less than a meter wide, sloping underground. The locations of quartz reefs that protrude above the surface are challenging to find. However, if gold prospectors are fortunate enough to discover a new reef, they can trace it over a long distance both on the surface and underground. Nonetheless, the deeper miners go, the greater the risk of cave-ins or other disasters.
Many mining companies worldwide are flocking to Victoria, hoping that modern technology can help them discover and extract more pure gold. Modern mines operate based on an understanding of how rocks form and how the Earth’s crust deforms during tectonic shifts. This allows companies to predict the 3D shape of the gold-bearing quartz reefs, making it easier to locate them deep underground. Today’s drilling methods enable rock sampling using machinery, such as giant core drills. Currently, Victoria’s gold mines produce approximately 18,427 kg of gold each year.
