A professional gold prospector for years, his wife had sent him out of the house to do exactly that after becoming annoyed with his stroppy mood. He went off to prospect an area of land near Wedderburn, Victoria, with his metal detector.
He had scanned the area in the past but this time the alarm on the metal detector was set off. After initially believing the find was copper, he quickly realised that the lump of metal 15 centimetres below the surface was around 2.7 kilograms of gold.
Named as 42-year-old Kerang resident Mick Brown, the man has been suffering mood swings for a while after giving up smoking. This time, being ordered out of the house turned out to bring Brown a fortune however as the nugget is expected to be worth at least $141,000.
Brown intends to use the money to pay off his debts before buying his children a spa to relax in. He has named the find “fair dinkum” and is confident that more gold is to be found in the area, saying “There’s some big ten-kilo jobs out there.”
The man’s wife is presumed to have been somewhat more satisfied with him upon his return to the house with over $140,000 worth of gold in his bag. Brown later encouraged others to take up hobbyist prospecting, noting how relatively easy it is to find gold around his local area in Australia.
Indeed, it was around Wedderburn where Australia’s biggest-ever gold nugget find was discovered in 1981 which weighed in at 256 ounces, rather eclipsing the 87 ounce mass of “fair dinkum.”
