Replica of Welcome Stranger Nugget (Photo: Rodney Start / Museums Victoria, CC BY 4.0 DEED)

John Deason was the son of a fisherman. Much like his future business partner Richard Oates, a fellow tin miner, he was not seen to be destined for future greatness. Yet in 1851, an Australian Gold Rush that started in New South Wales changed both of their fates. Hundreds of thousands of prospectors immigrated to the Outback hoping to be among the lucky ones to discover gold. Deason left for the Down Under in 1853, and a year later Oates joined him.

While the men found small gold nuggets here and there, they were struggling to get by and relied on their small farms to fund their prospecting operation. Reportedly, the men didn’t have enough credit to even get a sack of flour the week prior to their big break. After 15 years of toiling, Deason broke his pick on what was to become known as the “Welcome Stranger” nugget. At a whopping 158.7 pounds, the gold behemoth was encased in quartz and found tangled in the roots of a tree. The men decided to wait until nighttime to uncover the entirety of the nugget and then threw a party for their friends to reveal their history-making find.

With these very friends acting as a bodyguard, the men took their nugget to the nearby town of Donolly. They attracted a crowd to the London Chartered Bank, requiring a constable to be called. However, the Welcome Stranger was too big to fit on the bank’s scale. Before a photograph could be taken, the nugget was broken apart to be weighed. It took five hours to get small enough pieces.

The nugget drew comparison to the previously largest found “Welcome Nugget,” from over a decade earlier in New South Wales. The Welcome Stranger was larger by 6 pounds, and was purer gold. While Deason and Oates generously gave bits of the nugget to their friends, eager to have a piece of history, they earned over £9,400 ($11,863). That would be equivalent to a little over  £1.3 million (roughly $1.64 million) today. However, a similar amount of gold would fetch around  £3 million ($3.8 million) today.

The nugget was melted and sent to England by the end of February 1869, and Deason and Oates went back to work their land as if little had changed. The local paper Dunolly & Bet Bet Shire Express noted on a visit after their discovery how little changed the men were and started, “We are glad that the monster has fallen to the lot of such steady and industrious men.” Deason and his family stayed in the area, with descendants still residing in what is a quiet agricultural area today. While Oates returned to his homeland for some time, finding a wife and starting a family, he later returned to Australia.

It’s unclear whether the men’s lives changed drastically after their newfound wealth; however, the Welcome Stranger continues to hold the public’s historical imagination. In the 1980s, Australia released pure gold bullion coins, with the largest denomination depicting the Welcome Stranger. Despite no photographs existing, several replicas have been made. In 2019, the prospectors' descendants gathered to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the precious discovery.

Even today, tourists looking for adventure can head to Victoria to dig for gold. No one has yet managed to find a nugget of gold larger than the “Welcome Stranger” in Australia or anywhere else. The largest fully intact nugget still in existence is the “Pepita Canaa,” weighing 134 pounds. Julio de Deus Filho found the piece in Brazil in 1983. The Museu de Valores do Banco Central do Brasil has it on display. If you want to check out an Australian nugget of gold, the “Hand of Faith,” discovered in 1980 by a metal detector, is fittingly on display at the Gold Nugget Casino in Las Vegas. At only 60 pounds, though, it is just over a third of Oates and Deason’s mammoth.

One hundred fifty-five years ago, two humble miners, John Deason and Richard Oates, discovered the largest gold nugget ever that was the size of an adult man.

Miners and their wives posing with the finders of the nugget, Richard Oates, John Deason, and his wife. (Photo: William Parker via Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

Before a proper photograph could be taken, the “Welcome Stranger” nugget was melted down, leaving only drawings to base replicas upon.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)

h/t: [IFL Science]

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A Chaunacops (a genus of bony fish in the sea toad family Chaunacidae) is seen at a depth of 1388.65 meters on Seamount SF2 inside the Nazca-Desventuradas Marine Park. (Photo: Schmidt Ocean Institute, CC BY-NC-SA)

In an era of widely accessible information and technological advances, it is easy to think scientists know everything there is to know about Earth. In reality though, the ocean is still a vast mystery. UNESCO estimates as little as 5% of it has been explored. This past January and February, scientists Dr. Javier Sellanes and Dr. Erin Easton led a team of international researchers, organized through the Schmidt Ocean Institute, to a remote region of the southeast Pacific. There they began to uncover strange new worlds thought to be unlike anywhere else. With the crucial help of an underwater robot, over a hundred new species have potentially been discovered.

The remotely operated vehicle ROV SuBastian, a robot that can dive to previously inaccessible depths of 14,000 feet, facilitated the crew of the Falkor (too) finding many diverse species in underwater mountain ranges, better known as ridges, off the coast of Chile. The Salas y Gómez, Nazca, and Juan Fernandez ridges are home to over 200 seamounts, or individual mountains, created by volcanic activity. Each seamount provides shelter to an underwater community that seems otherworldly, with long-living, slow-growing, and slow to reproduce species found nowhere else. These species are especially vulnerable to damage from human and oceanic forces.

Among specimens collected during the expedition, the team believes they have discovered new species of squat lobsters, which have arms longer than their bodies, and cactus-like sea urchins. They have also found vertebrates such as the Chaunacops fish, known as coffinfish. The coffinfish survives very  deep underwater only by remaining motionless on the seafloor for the majority of its life.

While the images of brilliantly colored and alien-like sea life are mesmerizing in themselves, the data collected by the expedition will serve a critical purpose in conservation efforts.

In 2016, Chile banned bottom trawling on seamounts in its jurisdiction, but most of the ocean is outside of any one nation's borders. Therefore international efforts are needed to protect these magical oceanic mountain ranges. The hope is this expedition will help create a Marine Protected Area under the UN's 2023 High Seas Treaty. This will further restrict bottom trawling, a fishing method which rips up coral reefs and indiscriminately catches species from the seafloor in its net.

Over the next several years, scientists will work to confirm that the specimens collected by the ROV SuBastian are indeed previously unknown species. Another expedition of the seamounts is already in progress, keeping the Falkor (too) crew busy. In the meantime, we can all appreciate how much beauty there is yet to be discovered under the sea.

The crew of the Falkor (too) spent just over a month off the coast of Chile and discovered hundreds of undersea animals.

Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) SuBastain is deployed from Research Vessel Falkor (too) at the beginning of a scientific dive. (Photo: Alex Ingle / Schmidt Ocean Institute, CC BY-NC-SA)

This expedition resulted in images of rarely seen sea creatures, such as the whiplash squid, as well as animals thought to be previously unknown.

A spiraling coral documented at 1419 meters deep on Seamount JF1, within the bounds of the Mar de Juan Fernández Multiple Uses Marine Protected Area off the coast of central Chile. (Photo: ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean Institute, CC BY-NC-SA)

A rarely-seen whiplash squid (Mastigopsis hjorti) documented at 1105 meters depth after inking at Seamount 17 (Ikhtiandr) in the Nazca Ridge. (Photo: ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean Institute, CC BY-NC-SA)

Oblong Dermechinus urchins documented at a depth of 516 meters on Seamount JF2. An international group of scientists aboard a recent Schmidt Ocean Institute expedition believe they have discovered more than 100 new species living on seamounts off the coast of Chile, including deep-sea corals, glass sponges, sea urchins, amphipods, and squat lobsters. (Photo: ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean Institute, CC BY-NC-SA)

A squat lobster documented in coral at a depth of 669 meters on Seamount JF2. An international group of scientists aboard a recent Schmidt Ocean Institute expedition believe they have discovered more than 100 new species living on seamounts off the coast of Chile, including deep-sea corals, glass sponges, sea urchins, amphipods, and squat lobsters. (Photo: ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean Institute, CC BY-NC-SA)

Confirming that the species are new will take several years.

Erin Easton (Chief Scientist, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley) and Elyssia Gonzalez (Student, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley) work together in the Research Vessel Falkor (too)'s Main Lab.  (Photo: ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean Institute, CC BY-NC-SA)

The expedition explored seamounts that had never been studied prior.

Schmidt Ocean Intitute: Website | Facebook | Instagram
h/t: [Popular Science]

All Images via Schmidt Ocean Institute.

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