The largest gold nugget ever discovered, with a weight equivalent to that of a grown man, was found by miners John Deason and Richard Oates in Australia. Overnight, they went from struggling tin miners to wealthy individuals, thanks to their incredible find.
Since 1851, the temptation of newly discovered large gold fields in Western Australia has led to a gold rush in Australia, with thousands of people immigrating to this colony. While many gold prospectors only found small amounts of precious metals, two unassuming tin miners experienced a life-changing moment by unearthing the largest haul in history.
On February 5, 1869, they stumbled upon the unbelievable treasure. Deason, a tin miner from Cornwall, had lost his fisherman father at sea during his childhood. Sixteen years prior, in 1853, he had set off for Victoria in search of wealth in the Southern Hemisphere. A year later, his friend and fellow miner Oates joined him on his journey.
According to the local newspaper, the Bendigo Advertiser, the two men had faced financial difficulties before their momentous discovery. Just a week before finding the gold nugget, they were even denied credit to buy a bag of flour. Despite 15 years of mining with little success, Deason had a stroke of luck one day in February when his pickaxe hit something stone-like while surface digging in Bulldog Gully near the village of Moliagul in Victoria.
In a 1905 manuscript, Deason described how he felt something about an inch below the surface as he dug around the tree roots one morning. He said, “I scraped with the pick and struck it; it was gold. I cleaned the stuff around it.”
Attempting to lever the nugget out, his pick snapped, so he used a crowbar to pry it loose. The nugget was encased in quartz, measuring about 2 feet in length with similar width and depth. Excitedly, Deason’s son ran to fetch Oates, who was working nearby. They used a wheelbarrow to transport the nugget to Deason’s hut.
Deason’s wife Catherine was at home when he returned, claiming he had something to show her. Accustomed to her husband bringing strangers home for meals, she remarked, “I hope it’s not another unwelcome stranger this time.”
“No, this time it’s a welcome stranger,” Deason responded.
The group placed the heavy nugget in the fireplace, lit it on fire, and let it burn for about ten hours. After cooling, they worked through the night to chip away the quartz, revealing the gold. Deason estimated that some smaller pieces of gold had broken off, and they gave about 5 ounces of gold to friends.
Initially, Deason greatly underestimated the nugget’s value. He recalled, “When my mate came, I said, ‘How much do you think it’s worth, mate? Is it worth 5,000 pounds?’ He said, ‘Maybe 2,000 pounds.'”
Official assessment revealed the total weight of the gold to be around 145 pounds. A local bank purchased the nugget for 9,563 pounds, equivalent to $3 to $4 million today. Accompanied by friends acting as guards, the partners decided to conduct the transaction at the London Chartered Bank in Dunolly, 10 miles away, rather than traveling to Melbourne due to robbery concerns en route.
A large crowd eagerly gathered at the London bank to catch a glimpse of the nugget, later known as the “Welcome Stranger.” The nugget was so large that it couldn’t fit on the bank’s scales, thus requiring it to be broken on an anvil. After weighing, it was found to weigh more than the previous record holder, the “Welcome Nugget,” discovered over a decade earlier in Victoria.
Before the end of February, the “Welcome Stranger” was melted down before it could be photographed, with the gold being sent to England, leaving only drawings for future speculation.
Over a century and a half have passed since the incredible discovery of this gold nugget. In 2019, John Tully, chairman of the Goldfields Historical and Arts Society in Dunolly, mentioned the remarkable find, stating, “This discovery is significant. It’s the largest gold nugget ever found to date around the world. There aren’t many things that can hold a record for 150 years.”
Following the gold rush fervor of finding the nugget, the two newly affluent former tin miners modestly returned to their work, as if nothing extraordinary had happened. The Dunolly & Bet Shire Express interviewed the gold finders during that fortunate February and wrote, “We are glad the ‘monster’ has fallen into such staid and industrious hands.”