Towers nugget fires up a fever

A PROSPECTOR who found a gold nugget weighing more than a kilogram near Charters Towers is lying low.

The man is from Queensland and buys his metal detectors in Charters Towers.

Peter Cragg, from Gold City Detecting, said the lucky prospector was using a GPX 5000 metal detector costing about $ 6000 when he found the 1.1763kg nugget. He said the man was now in the throes of selling the nugget to a private collector for a premium price of more than $ 60,000.

Mr Cragg said the nugget would most likely be retained in its natural state by the collector. He said it would be sacrilegious to turn such a magnificent specimen of gold into earrings or necklaces.

It has not been divulged where the nugget was found.

Charters Towers itself is a gold town and so is Raven- CATTLE stations where you can pay and stay to search for gold in the Georgetown, Forsayth and Ravenswood areas: Western Creek Station; Gilberton Station; Dells Hole; Long Gully; Flat Creek Station; Hillsborough Station. NQ gold towns: Charters Towers; Pentland; Ravenswood. swood to the southeast, where prospectors can pay to camp and look for gold on Hillsborough Station. Pentland, to the west of Charters Towers, is a well- known gold mining centre but most of the sites there are on private property, and permission needs to be obtained to look for gold from the landowners.

The Charters Towers nugget is a lot smaller than the 72kg Welcome Stranger found in Bulldog Gully in Central Victoria in 1869. Folklore has it that the nugget was so close to the surface it bore the marks from the hoofs of horses and from wagon wheels that had passed over it.

Mr Cragg said the largest nugget ever found by a prospector with a metal detector was the 27.21kg Hand of Fate in Victoria in 1980. It was standing in a vertical position just 30cm below the surface.

Mr Cragg said the largest recorded nugget found near Charters Towers was the 143 ounce ( 4.05kg) Prince of Wales, discovered in 1920.

“There have been bigger but they haven’t been recorded,” he said.

Mr Cragg succumbing to

TRY YOUR LUCK

said gold before fever,