Considered to be one of the largest known gold nuggets in existence today, the “Twilight” nugget was discovered in Dunolly, Victoria, a site which, in 1856, was home to one of the largest gold rushes ever witnessed in Australia. The majority of gold nuggets obtained during this gold rush, including one of the largest ever found Welcome Stranger” were melted down. The current availability, therefore, of gold nuggets from this region available for public consumption, and not in museums, is very small.
The region was formed by volcanic lava and magma around 2.67 billion years ago, with tectonic forces creating mountains. Major gold deposits were then formed in the greenstone belts of the area around 40 million years later. The ”Twilight” nugget, named due to the miner who found it considering himself to be in his ‘twilight’ years of prospecting, was located using a modern metal detector, and was found at a depth of two feet. It took two men several hours to extract the nugget from beneath a layer of cement like rock.