The Welcome Stranger gold nugget was discovered in 1869. Prospectors John Deason and Richard Oates found it on 5 February 1869 near Moliagul, Victoria, Australia, during the Victorian gold rush.
The nugget was an alluvial deposit, meaning erosion had freed it from its original rock and concentrated it in shallow ground. It weighed about 72 kilograms in its natural state and yielded approximately 69.9 kilograms of gold, or more than 2,300 troy ounces. Its size made it the largest alluvial gold nugget ever found.
The find was too large to weigh accurately with the available equipment and was broken up before being transported to Melbourne, where it was melted into ingots. Those ingots were shipped to London and sold, so the original nugget no longer survives as a single specimen.
A common mix-up is with the Holtermann Nugget, found in New South Wales in 1872. That specimen was larger by total mass because it included quartz, but Welcome Stranger remains the famous record-holder for a massive alluvial gold nugget.