Looks like we have a new contender for “Australia’s Got Talent”! A rookie gold digger struck it rich in the “Golden Triangle” of Victoria, unearthing a massive gold nugget weighing a whopping 10.1 pounds, with 5.7 pounds of pure gold!
Dubbed the “Lucky Strike Nugget,” it landed in the hands of Darren Kamp at Lucky Strike Gold, who put a price tag on it that’s worth more than a lifetime supply of Vegemite.
“When it hit my hand, I was gobsmacked,” he exclaimed to CNN. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime discovery!”
This gold-digging veteran with 43 years of experience couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw the “Lucky Strike Nugget.” “I’ve seen rocks, I’ve seen gold, but never the two combined in such a massive size!” he exclaimed. He also admitted that Lucky Strike Gold has been flooded with people bringing in fake gold rocks more than a croc-infested swamp in the wet season.
The amateur gold digger, a man who has asked to be unnamed, who found the “Lucky Strike Nugget,” broke the rock in half because he thought there might be a gold nugget inside. When Darren Kamp cleaned it up, he noted it was like watching a golden volcano erupt, with gold oozing out of the rock everywhere.
Kamp spilled the beans about the amateur prospector’s discovery, revealing that he used a 1,200 AUD ($800) Minelab Equinox 800 detector to uncover the mammoth nugget. “It looks like even those 1,200-dollar machines can do the job,” joked Kamp, who has been in the business for over four decades. “With interest rates going up, it’s no surprise people are getting desperate for some extra cash. Who knows, maybe they’ll find enough gold to finally quit their day jobs.”
And, of course, Kamp’s got some serious competition in the gold-finding game. He noted that his friend once stumbled across a 600-ounce nugget! However, that doesn’t lessen the fact that Kamp’s still got bragging rights for the 24-ounce nugget he found, now worth a whopping $46,753. With the price of gold at about $63 per gram, Kamp says it’s definitely worth the search — “Just two small bits, and you’ve got yourself 200 bucks!”
Any Gold Rush nerds know that back in the day when someone yelled “Eureka!”, it usually meant they struck gold. Such was the case in the 1850s when rich gold deposits were discovered in Australia, causing a series of gold rushes in Victoria’s Ballarat and Bendigo regions.
Now, it’s common to find massive nuggets like the “Holtermann Nugget,” weighing over 200 pounds. In fact, in both 2013 and 2020, amateur gold diggers struck it rich with nuggets worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Who knows, take a trip to Australia and maybe you’ll be the next lucky prospector to strike gold!
