Famous Gold Nuggets - 1Earth Antiques & Appraisals Magazine

Famous Australian Gold Nuggets The Welcome Stranger The world's largest recorded alluvial gold nugget is “The Welcome Stranger”. The huge gold nugget was found on 5th February, 1869 at Black Lead, Bull-dog Gully, Moliagul in Victoria Australia.Read more about the Welcome Stranger gold nugget here.
The Welcome Stranger Courtesy of Museum Victoria	The gold nugget was broken up on an anvil to be weighed at nearby Dunolly in Victoria, Australia. The gold miners were John Deason and Richard Oats, who were paid 19,068 pounds for the nugget.
The Welcome The "Welcome Nugget" was found on 9th June, 1858 at Bakery Hill, Ballarat, Victoria by the Red Hill Mining Company. Other reports state it was discovered on 15th June.
The Welcome Courtesy of Museum Victoria	The large gold nugget weighes 2,217 ounces and 16 dwts., gold. After refining it yielded 2,195 ozs. of fine gold. Read about The Welcome gold nugget here
The Hand of Faith This nugget was found behind the State School in Kingower, Victoria in 1980. It weighs 845 troy ounces (about 27.2 kg) and measures 45 by 19 by 10 centimetres.
The Hand of Faith Courtesy of Museum Victoria	Despite concerted efforts to keep it within Australia, the nugget was later sold and is on display in the Golden Nugget Casino, Las Vegas, USA. Read about The Hand of Faith gold nugget here
Schlemm Nugget This nugget was found by Henry Davey in Dunolly, near Wilson's Lead on the 11th of November 1872.
The Schlemm Nugget Courtesy of Museum Victoria	It weighs 538 ounces and measures 31 by 30 by 8 centimetres in size. Quartz was mixed throughout the nugget with a little ironstone. Read more about the Schlemm gold nugget here
Lady Loch This gold nugget was found on the 23rd of August 1887 by the Midas Mining Company in Sulky Gully Ascot, Victoria at a depth of 114 feet.
Lady Loch Courtesy of Museum Victoria	The Lady Loch gold nugget weighs 617 ounces and measures 34 by 21 by 7 centimetres. Read about the Lady Loch gold nugget here
The Pride of Australia This attractive gold nugget was found at Mosquito Gully near Wedderburn in June 1981. It weighs 256 ounces and is second only in size to the Hand of Faith amongst those nuggets found by metal detector.
The Pride of Australia Courtesy of Museum Victoria	It was purchased for $250,000 by the State Bank of Victoria in 1985 and was stolen in a smash and grab raid on its case in August 1991. Its whereabouts is unknown.
Read more about The Pride of Australia gold nugget here The Little Jack The Little Jack gold nugget was found within the rich Poseidon Lead, Tarnagulla, Victoria, by Jackson and Hughes on the 4th of February 1907.
The Little Jack Courtesy of Museum Victoria	This 252-ounce nugget measured 22 by 14 by 10 centimetres and was intermingled with a substantial amount of quartz. Read more about the Little Jack gold nugget here
Spondulix This nugget was found during November 1872 in Eureka Gully, which is part of the Jordan’s gold field, between Berlin and Wehla, Victoria.
The Spondulix Courtesy of Museum Victoria	It was found by Wilton and party and weighed in at 155 ounces, measured 17 by 16 by 5 centimetres. It was also associated with some quartz and ironstone. Read more about The Spondulix gold nugget here
The "Beyers and Holtermann Specimen" The world's largest single mass of gold is correctly not a nugget it is a 'specimen' known as a 'matrix'.
	At an estimated 3,000 ounces of gold makes "The Beyers and Holtermann Specimen" the world's largest single mass of gold. Read more about the Beyers and Holtermann Specimen here
The World's richest mile is at Kalgoolie, the world's richest quarter mile is the Rose of England zone, Hill End. The greatest amount of gold from the smallest amount of quartz was from Paxton’s Mine, Hawkins Hill, 1872. Two tons of quartz was officially crushed at the Vickery Stamper Battery with the recorded yield being 4,200 ozs. Nuggety Gully on the side of Hawkins Hill, Hill End, is a 200 metre blind gully which reputedly yielded more gold in a shorter time than anywhere else. As for goldfields the world's richest was discovered by an Australian digger, George Harrison, who in 1886 crushed and panned some odd looking rock from the land of Witwatersrand. He had discovered the main reef at the future site of Johannesburg which became the world's richest goldfield and the largest mining city with a population of 2,000,000 people. To date South Africa has produced one third of all the world's known gold mined since the Middle Ages, from depths of over four kilometres below the surface of the earth. For the world's richest singular gold mine we move back to the last of the three eastern states of Australia to join the goldrushes. An area known as Ironstone Mountain in NSW was prospected by the Morgan brothers in 1882, and every ton of ironstone crushes yielded gold. Re-named Mount Morgan by the brothers, it became the richest single gold mine in the world, producing payable quantities of gold longer than any other mine in Australia.