A gold prospector has found a 4.6-kilogram nugget worth 240,000 Australian dollars, or roughly 150,000 euros, in the gold fields of Victoria (Australia).
A find worth gold. The prospector, who preferred to remain anonymous, found a gold nugget worth 240 thousand Australian dollars, or approximately 150 thousand euros, in the gold fields in the state of Victoria (Australia).
By presenting himself to the Lucky Strike Gold prospecting shop in Geelong, the second largest city in the state, the lucky winner did not expect to receive that amount back. “Do you think it’s for 10,000 Australian dollars (more than 6,000 euros)?” he asked the latter to Darren Camp, the building’s owner, according to BBC.
Multiple testing by the store manager confirmed that the gold was interlinked throughout the nugget. The rock has a total weight of 4.6 kg, and contains 83 ounces of gold, or 2.6 kg of the noble metal. Darren Combe bought the nugget from a prospector before christening it “Lucky Strike”.
“In 43 years of excavation I have never seen a specimen of so much gold. Perhaps in the 1850s a few were found, but these days they are very rare. I myself dreamed of finding something very large. The biggest I found during my excavation was 24 ounces 12 years ago,” Darren Combe testified Watchman.
A nugget was found with an amateur device
In addition to the success associated with the discovery of this treasure, the head of Lucky Strike Gold spoke of the “incredible” luck of the prospector due to the equipment used in this discovery.
The latter made the discovery with a device costing 1,200 Australian dollars, or less than 740 euros, which is about as much as an entry-level detector. According to Darren Camp, the device cannot detect the nugget if it is more than 15 cm in the ground.
Despite its weight and value, the “Lucky Strike” is not the largest gold nugget ever discovered in Australia. In 1869, a rock called “Welcome Stranger”, also found in Victoria, yielded 2,300 ounces of gold.
