The Welcome Stranger is the biggest alluvialgold nugget found, which had a calculated refined weight of. It measured and was discovered by prospectors John Deason and Richard Oates on 5 February 1869 at Moliagul, Victoria, Australia, about 14.6 kilometres north-west of Dunolly.
Discovery
Found only below the surface, near the base of a tree on a slope leading to what was then known as Bulldog Gully, the nugget had a gross weight of . Its trimmed weight was , and its net weight was . At the time of the discovery, there were no scales capable of weighing a nugget this large, so it was broken into three pieces on an anvil by Dunolly-based blacksmith Archibald Walls. Deason, Oates, and a few friends took the nugget to the London Chartered Bank of Australia, in Dunolly, which advanced them £9,000. Deason and Oates were finally paid an estimated £9,381 for their nugget, which became known as the "Welcome Stranger". At August 2019gold prices, it would be worth US$3.4 million . It was heavier than the "Welcome Nugget" of that had been found in Ballarat in 1858. The goldfields warden F. K. Orme reported that 2,269 ounces 10 dwt 14 grains of smelted gold had been obtained from it, irrespective of scraps that were given away by the finders, estimated as totalling another 47 ounces 7 dwt. The nugget was soon melted down and the gold was sent as ingots to Melbourne for forwarding to the Bank of England. It left the countryon board the steamship Reigate which departed on 21 February. An obelisk commemorating the discovery of the "Welcome Stranger" was erected near the spot in 1897. A replica of the "Welcome Stranger" is in the Old Treasury building, Treasury Place, Melbourne, Victoria; another replica is owned by descendants of John Deason and is now on display at the Dunolly Rural Transaction Center. , England, celebrating the find
Discoverers
John Deason was born in 1829 on the island of Tresco, Isles of Scilly, south-west of Cornwall, England, UK. In 1851, he was a tin dresser before becoming a gold miner. Deason continued with gold mining and workings most of his life and, although he became a store keeper at Moliagul, he lost a substantial proportion of his wealth through poor investments in gold mining. He bought a small farm near Moliagul where he lived until he died in 1915, aged 85 years. Richard Oates was born about 1827 at Pendeen in Cornwall. After the 1869 find, Oates returned to the UK and married. He returned to Australia with his wife and they had four children. The Oates family, in 1895, purchased of land at Marong, Victoria, about west of Bendigo, Victoria, which Oates farmed until his death in Marong in 1906, aged 79 years.
