AN AMATEUR prospector finally reveals precisely where he found Australia's second largest gold nugget, reports GEMMA GADD
He told a friend of the dream, drew a picture, dated and signed it and, most importantly, had it witnessed - on September 12, 1980.
Mr Hillier's vision was confirmed that same month, on September 26, while out fossicking for gold with his wife, Bep, in the Kingower State Forest (50km northwest of Bendigo).
Thirty years on, Mr Hillier last week took The Weekly Times back to Kingower, to the site of the famous find.
"It was like any other day," Mr Hillier recalled as he stood at the exact location.
"The old Garrett detector was very susceptible to ground noise ... I was getting that and a squeak in the middle of it ... I dug on the squeak."
More than 30cm below the surface he uncovered the tip of what would later be known as The Hand of Faith - the world's largest gold nugget discovered with a metal detector and the largest whole nugget still in existence today.
(The world's largest gold nugget, the Welcome Stranger, was discovered 5cm below the surface near Dunolly in 1869. It had to be broken into three pieces for weighing.)
"I thought 'Hey, it looks like a 50-ouncer', but it just kept getting bigger ... I dug and dug and dug."
Two hours later, fingers raw and lying outstretched on the ground, the couple unearthed the nugget, all 876 troy ounces or 27kg of it.
It was sitting upright - just as Mr Hillier had seen in his dream.
Dazed, they bundled the nugget - found just a few hundred metres south of the Inglewood-Rheola Rd, near the intersection of this major road and Ironbark Dam Rd, 150m behind the old Kingower State Primary School - into the back of the car and drove slowly back to Bridgewater, where they were staying in the local caravan park with their four children, all aged under 10.
"We are a very open family, but that night we zipped the doors up and pegged the curtains shut and didn't say a word," Mr Hillier said.
They did, however, tell one friend, and together, they drove to Bendigo - Bridgewater had only a manual telephone exchange - to phone a contact who would later negotiate the sale of the nugget for them.
"I'd given up smoking, but that night we went through cartoons of cigarettes and jugs of coffee.
"That same night another friend up from Melbourne found his first nugget. It was seven grams and we had to pretend to be excited ... it was very difficult. I thought 'If you only knew what we have in the bus'."
Looking back, Mr Hillier describes it as a tumultuous time.
"It took two months before I slept any more than two hours a night," he said.
"When you've grown up like I have, living week-to-week, and then you've got this in your hands, it's frightening. I was mostly afraid for the children."
It was a discovery that would change their lives - and just in the nick of time.
The family had sold all their possessions, transformed a bus into a portable home and set out on a travelling adventure from Albany in Western Australia a few years earlier with just $1000 to their name.
They toured from Perth to Mr Hillier's hometown of Cudgewa in North East Victoria and on to outback Queensland where tragedy struck - Mr Hillier severely injured his back working on a farm and was forced out of work.
They returned to Victoria and set up camp in Bridgewater and, on the recommendation of a specialist, Mr Hillier took up walking (detector in hand), a pastime that lead him to stumble on the famous find.
The nugget was sold to the Golden Nugget Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, US for $US1 million and the family bought a home in Perth, a car, took a holiday to visit Mrs Hillier's family in Holland and helped other family members buy their own homes.
Recalling buying the home in Perth, Mr Hillier said: "It's the only time in my life I've never bartered. I'm normally the greatest barterer in the world."
But after a few years they returned to Victoria, staked a claim where the nugget was found - the discovery had sparked a new gold rush in the hillsides of the old goldfields - and bulldozed the site.
"We found a few 20-gram nuggets, but otherwise, not a thing."
Mr Hillier still drives the Toyota Landcruiser he bought after finding the nugget - it's now done more than one million kilometres - and has settled in Bendigo.
In today's terms, 27 kilograms of gold is worth $1.232 million, but the fact the nugget remains intact elevates its worth. "If I had it now, I'd ask for $5 million and I'd probably get it," he said.
Would life be much different if he hadn't found the nugget?
"Probably not. None of our values have changed. I'm still a worker and always will be."
A monument was erected on the site earlier this year to mark the 30-year anniversary of the find.
