DIGBY DOG — Dig- gers for short — was having a field day tunnelling for rabbits when his owner Reg Wilson gave a shout. Over bounded Dig- gers to join in the action as Reg and his mate Wiurray Cox dug like fury around a solid lump of metal, which Reg’s detector had pin- pointed. The two prospectors and their faithful hound took about 30 minutes to unearth a 98-ounce gold nugget worth $100,000. “About 40 or 50 ounces of gold was sticking out from the clay,” a delighted Mur- ray said yesterday. “I put my pick under- neath but Reg was yell- ing not to push too hard in case I scratch- ed it. “All of a sudden it came out. I couldn’t tell you what I said because you wouldn't print it!” Diggers always accompanies the men on their prospecting trips and although the five-year-old canine often helps in the gold hunt, his target is usually of the cotton- tail kind. Reg, 39, of Geelong, has called the nugget The Orange Roughie, because it looks like its namesake, a fish. The local butcher's eyes nearly popped out when Reg and his part- ner and long-time mate, Murray, 33, also of Geelong, dumped the metal on his scales to be weighed. The prospectors had used his scales for other finds over the By HELEN CARTER years, but never any- thing like this beauty. Reg, a former spray Painter, used a new metal detector to find the nugget near Ballar- at, in Victoria’s “Gol- den Triangle”. Murray, a former crane driver, said the nugget would contain three ounces of impuri- ties at the most. Reg, a bachelor who says the find won't change his life, was back prospecting the next day. “You can’t say you're set for life when you find something like this — not when it’s gold,” he said. Reg says the nugget is worth “whatever someone is prepared to pay for it”. Murray reckons there is another lump of gold out there with his name on it, just waiting. The two men, who have been prospecting full time for five years, said gold fever and prospecting “gets in your blood.” Reg says he travelled the world looking for the perfect equipment only to return to Aus- tralia and find it on his doorstep. “Australians tend to knock Australian- made products but the new Minelab Ground Tracker 16,000 detector leaves everything in the world for dead,” he said. Minelab Electronic Industries, an Austra- lian-owned company based in SA, gave Reg and Murray prototypes of the $1250 detector to try before releasing it. ts