Looking for Gold - Travel Victoria

Of all the forms taken by gold, nuggets generate the greatest excitement. The Welcome Stranger nugget was the largest in the world.

While nuggets have been found in gold fields in most Australian states, those from Victoria were particularly large and abundant.

The small town of Moliagul became famous when a 69-kilogram gold nugget was found in 1869 at Bulldog Gully. That's over 150 lbs!

This huge lump of gold had to be broken into pieces because there were no scales large enough in the whole district to weigh it. It measured 60 centimetres X 30, roughly 24 inches X 12. A big nugget indeed!

Today the Welcome Stranger would be worth over two million dollars.

Sovereign Hill is an incredibly popular tourist attraction in Victoria, and certainly my favourite place to go. I went first with my children and fell in love with it all and these days I take the grandchildren.

Sovereign Hill is a fabulous re-creation of the hustle and bustle of life in Ballarat in the 1850s. Set on a former goldmining site, the compound has more than 60 buildings, while over 200 people volunteer to dress in period costume on a regular basis.

You can do all the traditional activities like pan for real gold, buy boiled sweets from the confectioner's, ride in horse-drawn carriages, travel underground on a tour of the Red Hill Mine, or simply observe the working and living conditions that existed last century.