Mick Brown has discovered one of the largest gold nuggets found in recent years, when he uncovered the "fair dinkum nugget" worth around $135,000 in Central Victoria.

Mick, from the Victorian town of Wedderburn - just over 2 hours drive North East of Melbourne - found the nugget under a few inches of dirt using his Minelab metal detector. As luck would have it he was out there on account of his wife. Mick had recently quit smoking and as a result was being grumpy around the house, so his wife told him to leave and get some fresh air. It was then he headed to a regular prospecting spot and not long after discovered the nugget buried in the dirt.

Central Victoria has a long and continuing history of gold discovery. Ballarat is a town synonymous with the Australian Gold Rush of the late 19th Century, with a 177-ounce gold nugget being discovered near the town as recent as 2 years ago. The biggest nugget found in Australia, the 256-ounce "Pride of Australia nugget", was found in 1981, in the same region that Mr Brown made his remarkable discovery.