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Australian gold nuggets: Victoria’s Golden Triangle

In the state of Victoria, in south-eastern Australia, some of the largest gold nuggets in history were found. This is the Golden Triangle.

The 1851 gold rush

Gold was discovered in Victoria in 1851 and within a few years hundreds of thousands of people arrived from all over the world. Towns such as Ballarat and Bendigo were born and grew thanks to gold. For decades, Victoria was one of the most important gold-producing regions on the planet.

What the Golden Triangle is

The name refers to the area of central Victoria roughly between the towns of Wedderburn, St Arnaud and Dunolly, famous for the number of large nuggets found close to the surface.

The giant nuggets

• Welcome Stranger (1869): found at Moliagul, it is considered the largest gold nugget ever found, with more than 70 kg of gold.
• Welcome Nugget (1858): found at Ballarat, almost 69 kg.
• Hand of Faith (1980): discovered with a metal detector near Kingower, about 27 kg.

What Australian nuggets are like

• High purity and a very characteristic warm yellow colour.
• Angular or irregular shapes, because many are found close to their host rock and travelled little.
• Often with traces of quartz or of the rock that contained them.

Prospecting today

Since the 1980s, metal detectors have made it possible to find nuggets that had gone unnoticed for more than a century. Detecting is still very popular in the Golden Triangle.

When we have Australian nuggets at auction, they appear on our home page under the “Australia” filter.