Amateur gold digger finds massive nugget worth £130,000 with cheap metal detector

An Australian prospector has found £130,000 worth of gold in a huge chunk of quartz that he dug out of the ground in the state of Victoria.

The man, who was equipped with a cheap metal detector, found the 4.6kg lump while prospecting for gold in an area known as “the Golden Triangle” between the towns of Bendigo and Ballarat.

It contained 83 ounces - or about 2.6kg - of gold which is worth A$240,000.

The discovery comes more than 150 years after the region was the epicentre of a gold rush that drew in hundreds of thousands of hopeful prospectors and helped spur Australia’s economic development.

The prospector, who wishes to remain anonymous, took the specimen to a gold dealer who said his jaw dropped when he first saw it, describing the chunk of rock as a once in a lifetime find.

“He said, ‘I’ve got something to show you.’ He pulled the rock out of his backpack and as he dropped it in my hand, he said, ‘Do you think there’s A$10,000 worth in there?’,” said Darren Kamp, from Lucky Strike Gold in the city of Geelong.

“It’s just such an incredible find. He said ‘Oh, that’s only half the rock, I’ve got the other half at home,’” Mr Kamp, who started out prospecting for gold more than 40 years ago, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

“He brought the other half in about two weeks later and I did a test on it, and it came up at 83 ounces of gold in this rock.”

During the gold rush of the 1850s and 1860s, around 80 million ounces of gold were extracted from the goldfields of Victoria.

But the state’s Geological Survey estimates that there may be up to 75 million ounces of gold still to be found.

‘Buying a gold pan’

Ethan West, a prospector who has won fame on a Discovery Channel TV show called Aussie Gold Hunters, said looking for gold was becoming more popular.

“Right now, with the price of gold and the cost of living going up more, people are turning to a hobby that can actually make them money.

“It can be as simple as getting a miner’s right and buying a gold pan or spending more and getting a metal detector,” he told the ABC.

“As long as you’re out there looking, there is the hope of finding untold riches.”

Australia’s first gold rush began in New South Wales in 1851, and was followed by the discovery of gold in neighbouring Victoria.

So much gold was found in Victoria that it accounted for more than a third of global production in the 1850s.

The gold rush attracted migrants from around the world, transforming the Australian colonies and boosting the economy.