I thought I would put this story in on the 5th anniversary of discovering its location. It is definitely not to be included as a find of the month, just for everyone's enjoyment. I don't know why I didn't enter it 5 years ago. I first got the signal on August 6th, 2015, and it was extracted from the rock about 2 weeks and 2 more trips later. I had picked up the 28.8 gram nugget the week before and been detecting all day without any luck. I went back to an area where there was an ironstone ridge and I had picked up 2 small nuggets inside little ironstone rocks in previous weeks. I was detecting around the edges of the rocks when I ran the 7000 over the top of one of the large boulders and got a good signal. This signal was almost identical to the 28.8 gram nugget so I was now very interested. I started digging following the edges of the boulder until I was now digging underneath the boulder. I removed enough dirt and put the coil in the bottom of the whole but got no response. Back on top and the signal was still good. I had to get home so I filled in the hole and hoped no-one would find it. The thoughts raced through my head. I couldn’t make it the next Tuesday but on Thursday I arrived with my cold chisel and mash hammer in tow. First up I took the SD2000 and 14” Elite mono coil and ran the coil over the rock before moving any dirt. If there was a signal I couldn’t determine it no matter how many times I went over the area. I tried again with the 7000 and a definite signal. So, the rest of the day was spent hitting that rock with the hammer and chisel and boy, it was hard as rock. I originally thought it might have been conglomerate, but it was pure unadulterated harder than rock, rock. After 6 hours I was exhausted and a little closer to the signal so I covered it all up again and went home. I returned yesterday and the first thing I did was get the 5000 and attach the 14” Elite mono coil. I walked to the boulder and thankfully it was still covered so I waved the 5000 over it and the signal was definite and much more pronounced than the 7000. So, back to rock breaking. 3 hours later and I managed to get a rather large piece to break away and there was something poking out of the rock. It didn’t look like gold but the shape and colour seemed different. I wiped it then had to get the water to wash it and that was when it definitely showed through as gold. Now it was just a matter of how big and how much more work would be required to extract it. A couple of hits with the chisel and miraculously it just fell to the ground. I was surprised at how easily the rock fell away from the nugget. A quick clean up and some photos and it was into the little bottle, not for me, just the nugget. So much effort required to extract, but it was a nice piece of 21.66 grams in the end. It wasn't a huge nugget but the anticipation of what size it was going to be and having to wait about 2 weeks before finding out was quite exhilarating. I hope you enjoyed the story and it just goes to show that you can find gold anywhere. Damien Morris - Australia & NZ