He Thought It Was Gold — But It Was a Meteorite

In 2015, a man named David Hole discovered a dense, reddish rock in yellow clay about two kilometers outside Maryborough, Victoria. Believing it to be a gold nugget — a plausible assumption in this historically gold-rich region — he took the rock home and spent years attempting to crack it open. Saws, drills, even acid and sledgehammers failed: the rock remained unyielding.

Finally, in 2018 he brought it to Museums Victoria for analysis. There, geologist Dermot Henry recognized the tell-tale signs of a meteorite — a dimpled, sculpted surface shaped by intense heating during atmospheric entry.

A Rare Relic from the Birth of the Solar System

Further study revealed the object to be the Maryborough meteorite — a 17-kilogram, 4.6-billion-year-old ordinary chondrite of type H5.

Inside, scientists found chondrules: tiny crystallized droplets of minerals that formed in the early solar nebula. These preserved structures make the meteorite a natural time capsule, offering a rare and tangible record of the processes that shaped our solar system long before Earth existed.

Despite the prevalence of gold nuggets in the region — thousands have been found over the years — meteorites like the Maryborough specimen are extraordinary rarities. In fact, only 17 meteorites have ever been officially recorded in Victoria, and this one ranks as the second-largest chondrite discovered there, trailing only a 55-kilogram specimen found in 2003.