Massive gold nugget discovered by retiree in WA
A massive gold nugget worth at least $110,000 has been uncovered by a prospector in remote Western Australia.
The retired man, who doesn’t wish to be named to protect his identity, says he’s been combing the same patch in the northern goldfields with a metal detector for years, but struck it lucky with better technology.
“When I had finished digging it out, I just thought ‘Oh my god’,” he said.
The man had discovered a 3.23kg specimen containing 68 troy ounces or 2.11kg of gold.
“It was pretty deep at about 800mm in clay soil so it took more than two hours of careful digging to get it out.”
Rob Anderson, who owns the Prospectors Pick in Bunbury, has known the prospector for a long time and says he’s a specialist at finding deep nuggets.
“He’s been very successful over the years,” Mr Anderson said.
“I think this find proves there’s still a lot of gold still out there, even in areas you might think have been picked clean.”
The nugget has been dubbed ‘Duck’s Foot’ because of its shape.
Earlier this month, Canadian gold mining company RNC Minerals announced it had found a whopping 9250 ounces of gold worth $15.9 million at its Beta Hunt gold mine, also in the Goldfields near Kambalda, in just one week.
That included two huge specimens weighing 95kg and 63kg with a combined estimated gold content of more than 4000 ounces, which President Mark Selby said could rank among the biggest ever discovered.
On Thursday, the company provided an updated estimate from the discovery, dubbed the ‘Father’s Day Vein’, saying it had produced more than 24,000 ounces worth more than $40.3 million.
In 2016, a Victorian prospector found a massive 4kg gold nugget, worth an estimated $300,000.
The man, who wished to remain anonymous, had been digging at the far southern edge of Victoria’s Golden Triangle and thought he’d stumbled across rubbish when he first saw the 4.12kg nugget.
-With AAP
