Welcome Stranger - Wikipedia
The Welcome Stranger is an alluvial gold nugget which is the biggest ever discovered, and was unearthed by Cornish miners John Deason and Richard Oates on 5 February 1869 in Moliagul, 9 miles north-west of Dunolly in Victoria, Australia.[ 2]
Found only 3 cm (1.2 in) below the surface, near the base of a tree on a slope leading to what was then known as Bulldog Gully, the nugget had a gross weight of 109.59 kilograms (3,523.5 ozt) (241 lb 10 oz). Its trimmed weight was 78 kilograms (2,520 ozt) (210 lbs), and its net weight was 72.02 kilograms (2,315.5 ozt) (192 lbs 11.5 oz).[ 3]
At the time of the discovery, there were no scales capable of weighing a nugget this large, so it was broken into three pieces on an anvil by Dunolly-based blacksmith Archibald Walls.[ 4]
Deason, Oates, and a few friends took the nugget to the London Chartered Bank of Australia, in Dunolly, which advanced them £9,000. Deason and Oates were finally paid an estimated £9,381 (equivalent to A$1,485,000 in 2022) for their nugget, which became known as the "Welcome Stranger". At August 2019 gold prices, it would be worth US$3.4 million [2.3 million GBP]. It was heavier than the "Welcome Nugget" of 69.0 kilograms (2,217 ozt) that had been found in Ballarat in 1858. The goldfields warden F. K. Orme reported that 70.57 kilograms (2,269 ozt) of smelted gold had been obtained from it,[ 5] irrespective of scraps that were given away by the finders, estimated as totalling another 1.46 kilograms (47 ozt).[citation needed ]
