Man’s life-changing $100k find in Aussie bushland

A Victorian man has found a life-changing gold nugget estimated to be worth about $100,000.

Luke Phillips, who posts metal-detecting videos on his YouTube channel Dig It Detecting, found the almost 1kg nugget in the Goldfields region.

Phillips said he had found a total of 0.6g of gold in small nuggets close to the surface before detecting the larger nugget buried much further underground.

“This is probably the deepest target I’ve ever dug for gold,” Phillips is heard saying in the video, as he uses his metal detector to guide his digging.

He then wonders if he might actually be digging for a horseshoe, before repeatedly exclaiming “oh my god” as he realises it was a much more exciting find.

“Holy smokes! Mate, we didn’t dig that far for no reason,” he says to his friend, Andrew.

“Holy smokes, if we didn’t get a gram before we’ve certainly got it now.

“Holy f***, look at it!”

Phillips then joked his friend would not need his glasses to see the nugget.

“I feel really jealous now,” Andrew said, suggesting if the nugget weighed more than an ounce they should go halves.

“I’ve never witnessed or seen or experienced something quite like this,” Phillips said.

“The excitement is just intense, I tell you.

“I know I was digging down to something but I expected it to be a bloody horseshoe.

“I didn’t expect to see gold. That is so cool.”

Phillips continued to excavate a larger hole, expressing his astonishment at just how large the nugget was.

“I never thought I would see this day where I was going to unearth a nugget,” he said.

“It’s like an egg ... that’s like a freaking egg.”

Phillips took the nugget home where he cleaned and weighed it at an impressive 868.4g, or 30.632 ounces.