Huge golden nugget worth $250,000 found in Australia

A man who has chosen to stay anonymous, for obvious reasons, has found a very large golden nugget during one of his weekend searches for golden coins in central Victoria's golden triangle in Australia.

The area is famous for the quality of the golden nuggets discovered there.

The nugget, dubbed 'Friday's Joy', weighs a little more than nine pounds and he said he also found another gold nugget the day before that was just over half a pound in weight.

He used a metal detector, and first assumed it was a horseshoe or something similar, but when he scraped away the earth he realised what it was.

The nugget is said to be valued at around $250,000 but a smaller, 7.5 pound nugget, called Destiny, which was found in nearby Ballarat fetched nearly $300,000 at auction in 2014.

The world's largest known nugget, 'The Welcome Stranger', was found in 1869 in the same area and weighed a staggering 178 pounds.