An amateur metal detectorist has been blown away after striking gold...literally.
The bloke was using a budget device as he combed through Victoria's golden triangle in search of that juicy, juicy metal.
The Minelab Equinox 800 started going off over one section in Ballarat and he dug up a sizeable chunk of earth.
Thinking he had just made himself a tiny bit richer, he took the 4.6kg nugget to Lucky Strike Gold in Geelong to see how much it was worth.
Advert
He initially thought he had found around $10,000 worth of gold.
However, the appraisers at Lucky Strike Gold said it's worth more than 20 times that.
More than half of the nugget's weight is gold, which is around 2.6 kilograms.
That makes his total find worth roughly $240,000.
Gold trader Darren Kamp told 9News the man said back to him that 'the wife's going to be happy with that'.
“It’s one of those life-changing pieces,” Mr Kamp revealed to NCA Newswire. “When he dropped it into my hand my jaw dropped with it.
“I’ve been in the gold industry for 43 years and it’s the biggest gold specimen I’ve seen.
“You see big specimens found by big companies underground...but to find it with a detector, it’s the biggest one I’ve seen.”
The golden triangle of Victoria is a vast stretch of land that comprises of Ballarat, Bendigo and St Arnuad.
Prospectors have been mining the area since the 1800s. At one point, Victoria was the second largest exporter of gold in the world after California.
It was so big that the gold exported to Britain in the 1850s allowed the UK to pay off all of its foreign debts and pursue rapid expansion.
Darren Kamp says this latest discovery proves there is still a lot of gold in them hills.
"If it's got your name on it, you'll find it," he explained to 9News.
"You just need some luck and persistence. It's like Tattslotto: you're never going to win unless you've got a ticket."
He's seen a big uptick in the number of people taking up metal detecting as a hobby, so there could be many more people finding big nuggets just like this bloke in Victoria.
Topics: Australia
Stewart Perrie