Welcome Stranger

For the Blackeyed Susans album, see Welcome Stranger (album).

A wood engraving of the Welcome Stranger published in The Illustrated Australian News for Home Readers on 1 March 1869.

The "Welcome Stranger" is the name given to the largest alluvial gold nugget ever found, which had a calculated refined weight of 2,283 oz 6 dwts 9 gr. It measured 61 cm (24 inches) by 31 cm (12.2 inches), and was discovered by Cornish prospectors John Deason and Richard Oates on 5 February 1869 at Moliagul, Victoria, Australia, about 9 miles north-west of Dunolly.

Found only 3 cm below the surface, near a root of a tree on a slope leading to what was then known as Bulldog Gully, its gross weight was 3,523.5 troy ounces, the trimmed weight was 2,520 troy ounces, and net it weighed 2,315.5 troy ounces or 72.02 kg.

At the time of the discovery there were no scales capable of weighing a nugget this large, so it was broken into three pieces on an anvil by Dunolly-based blacksmith Archibald Wall.

Deason, Oates and a few friends took the nugget to the London Chartered Bank, in Dunolly, which advanced them £9,000. Deason and Oates were finally paid an estimated £9,381 for their nugget, which became known as the "Welcome Stranger". It was heavier than the "Welcome Nugget" (of 2,217 ounces/ 68.96 kg) that had been found in Ballarat in 1858. The goldfields warden F. K. Orme reported that 2,269 ounces 10 dwt 14 grains (70.5591 kg) of smelted gold had been obtained from it, irrespective of scraps that were given away by the finders, estimated as totalling another 47 ounces 7 dwt.^{[citation needed]}

The nugget was soon melted down and the gold was sent as ingots to Melbourne for forwarding to the Bank of England. It left the country on board the steamship "Reigate" which left on 21 February.

The text on the commemorative obelisk

An obelisk commemorating the discovery of the "Welcome Stranger" was erected near the spot in 1897. A replica of the "Welcome Stranger" is in the City Museum, Treasury Place, Melbourne, Victoria; another replica is owned by descendants of John Deason.

Miners and their wives posing with the finders of the nugget, Richard Oates, John Deason and his wife.

The discoverers

John Deason was born in 1829 at Tresco on the Isles of Scilly in Cornwall, England, UK. Prior to being a gold miner, in 1851 he was a tin dresser. Deason continued with gold mining and workings most of his life and, although becoming a store keeper at Moliagul, he lost a substantial proportion of his wealth through poor investments in gold mining. He bought a small farm near Moliagul where he lived at the end of his life and died in 1915, aged 85 years.

Richard Oates was born about 1827 at Pendeen in Cornwall. After the 1869 find Oates returned to the UK and married. He returned with his wife to Australia where they had four children. The Oates family purchased 800 acres (3.2 km²) of land at Marong in 1895 about 15 miles (25 km) west of Bendigo, Victoria, and Oates farmed until his death at Marong, Victoria in 1906 aged 75 years.