I started the first hour driving around familiarising myself with the area, then another hour walking looking for a good spot to start. I finally decided to just start detecting. I managed to get into an overgrown area and found the usual pellets and small rubbish. It wasn't long before my ears were blasted by obvious rubbish. I knew it was rubbish but kept telling myself that if it was gold that I should be digging around the edges to avoid damaging the nugget. I spent a couple of minutes digging around the signal without it it moving. Another scrape over the top and it was out. I spied a shape that looked out of place and immediately identified it as what could have been lead. I picked it up and was sure it was lead due to the weight and colour. A couple of rubs on the piece and it was still lead. I got the magnifying glass out of the bag and got a real close up look and I thought there might have been some speckles of gold showing through but I still wasn't sure, so I washed it. Now all the dirt and dust washed away and a beautiful golden colour was now visible. I held it in my hand and thought that's nice, it should finally go more than an ounce. I got the electronic scales out of my pack and put it on the ground and turned it on. I put the nugget on the scales and eagerly awaited for it to go over 32 grams. The scale hit 100 grams. Being cheap Chinese scales I certainly didn't believe that so I reset it, made sure the ground was level and tared it. I put the nugget back on and again it showed 100.2 grams, 3.22 troy ounces. I couldn't believe it. I had finally broken the 1 ounce, 2 ounce and 3 ounce marks, and this piece was only about 1 inch in the ground. I am so used to seeing tiny little pieces sitting in the middle of the tray of my powder scales, but this one goes right across the tray. Any heavier and the scales wouldn't have been able to weigh it as it only weighs up to around 1600 GRAINS, approx. 3.5 troy ounces. My biggest nugget by a huge amount.
Damien – Australia
