An Australian man has found a 2.7 kilogram gold nugget - and only because his wife told him to get out of the house for being grumpy.

Kerang resident Mick Brown, 42, had just given up smoking, and wasn't dealing with his mood swings.

And now he's $141,000 richer.





Australia correspondent Donna Demaio says he's actually a gold prospector and has been doing it for years... so his wife sent him off to do it.

Brown was checking with his metal detector a patch of land near Wedderburn, Victoria, where he had prospected before, Fairfax reports.





The lump of gold, which was about 15 centimetres below the surface, set off the detector's alarm. At first he thought it was less-valuable copper.

"I thought, 'bugger me, it is, it's bloody gold," Brown told Fairfax.

"I just dug it up, 87 ounces of the good stuff."

He hopes the find, which he has called the "fair dinkum nugget", will fetch more than the estimated $141,000, and he told Fairfax he hopes to pay off debts and buy his children a spa.

And the prospector is confident even bigger nuggets could be found.

"There's some big ten-kilo jobs out there," Brown told Fairfax.