The Welcome Stranger is an alluvial gold nugget which is the biggest ever discovered, and was unearthed by Cornish miners John Deason and Richard Oates on 5 February 1869, 9 miles north-west of Dunolly, Australia.
A wood engraving of the Welcome Stranger published in The Illustrated Australian News for Home Reader on 1 March 1869. The scale bar across the bottom represents 12 inches (30 cm).
The text on the commemorative obelisk in pillared railings
Miners and their wives posing with the finders of the nugget, Richard Oates, John Deason and his wife
Statue in Redruth, England, celebrating the find
A gold nugget is a naturally occurring piece of native gold. Watercourses often concentrate nuggets and finer gold in placers. Nuggets are recovered by placer mining, but they are also found in residual deposits where the gold-bearing veins or lodes are weathered. Nuggets are also found in the tailings piles of previous mining operations, especially those left by gold mining dredges.
Alaskan gold grains
A large gold nugget from Nevada County, California
A large gold nugget from the Kuskokwim Mountains of central Alaska. 6.6 x 2.0 x 1.1 cm. Weight 77 grams