Stage 1 constructions for ‘The Valley of Tomorrow’ are well underway and yesterday Construction Manager Andrew Aureate was quick to inform the MVRC team that while digging at the new TOTE Building site the excavator picked up something very unusual.
A gold nugget was dug out of the ground at approximately 11:11am yesterday, and workers on site could hardly contain their excitement as the dirt was dusted away and the golden nugget was revealed.
“I’ve been a Construction Manager for 17 years now and I’ve never seen anything interesting dug up before.
“Usually it’s just waste- rubbish, plastics or old PVC Pipes.
“But we’ve literally struck gold here,” Aureate said.
The nugget, which tipped the scales at a hefty 39.7kg, was taken to the local jeweler on Puckle Street yesterday and was deemed to be worth $1.1M AUD, making it an extremely valuable find.
Operating the excavator at the time was Darren Kismet, and he too could not believe his eyes after the nugget caught the light of the sun and glistened through the teeth of his machine.
“It’s astonishing really. It didn’t seem real at the time.
“I was just about to knock-off for lunch and I saw a little sparkling object at the end of the digger and thought to myself ‘it can’t be, can it?’,” Kismet explained.
The MVRC are now looking into ways of utilizing the find, with one suggestion being melting it down to cover the entire Winx statue, befitting of the four-time Cox Plate winning champion.