Journalist Jeroen van Bergeijk, who profiled me for a Dutch magazine a few years ago, has been keeping me up to date on his new life to Australia. His wife is taking a winemaking class there, and to pass the time, Jeroen has been prospecting for gold. He told me, "after weeks of metal detecting, I only found about 2 grams of gold, but hey, it's a start."

Another local gold prospector has gotten a bit more lucky. Says Jeroen:

A Perth-based goldbuyer bought and sold the worlds third largest nugget here recently. These things are EXTREMELY rare. This thing weighed 23 kg (gold value alone around 860.000 US dollars). There's only two in the world that are heavier. This particular nugget was sold privately to an undisclosed buyer in the US within 24 hrs. The nugget had been found a couple of weeks ago with a metal detector somewhere in the goldfields around here. Through various tests it had been established that the thing has a 92% purity.

Jeroen put the full story on his website: The third largest gold nugget in the world