Amateur prospector finds 1.2kg gold nugget worth up to $200,000 near Tibooburra in NSW

A nugget worth up to $200,000 was almost missed by a prospector who had spent days searching the red dirt in the outback — and feared his spectacular find might be nothing more than “a painted rock”.

The amateur fossicker captured the moment he unearthed the monster nugget on video, with sounds of excitement filling the air as he dug into the rocky red soil and exposed a flash of gold.

The footage follows the discovery from the first scrapes of dirt to the moment the prospector lifts the hefty prize into view, turning it over to reveal its rough, irregular shape.

WATCH THE FIND IN THE PLAYER ABOVE OR EMBED BELOW

His excitement is palpable as the reality of what he may have found begins to sink in — a discovery that could be worth more than most people earn in a year.

The anonymous prospector had been digging for several days at Mt Stuart Station near Tibooburra in the remote north-west corner of NSW, when his metal detector picked up a faint signal.

What emerged was a monster nugget weighing more than 1.2kg, flecked with quartz and containing about 940g of pure gold.

At spot prices, the discovery is worth between $150,000 and $160,000 — but the prospector believes a collector could pay as much as $200,000 for the extraordinary specimen.

He has already given it a name: Tibooburra Spud.

But the discovery was far from a sure thing, with the prospector revealing that he had almost walked straight past the nugget.

“It wasn’t a loud signal for the size of the piece that it is but once I got down to 100mm or something like that, the machine was squealing,” he told the ABC.

“It might have been on the first or second scrape I just seen this bright yellow dot in the centre of the hole.”

The prospector, who has spent years searching for gold, said he was finishing up a day’s searching in mid-October when his Gold Monster 2000 detector picked up the signal.

Even then, he was wary of getting his hopes up.

After years of digging through the outback, he knows the disappointment of chasing a promising signal only to uncover worthless metal.

“You dig lots of rubbish … lots of lead bullets, old timer’s nails, horseshoes, everything,” he said.

“Just keep walking, keep swinging, keep digging every target.”