This was a 100% genuine prank.
My son Matthew had absolutely no idea he was being pranked.
Jacob Strickling and his two sons Samuel (age 11) and Matthew (age 21) went on a two day road trip to Hill End in New South Wales Australia.
Hill End was a gold mining town in the 1850's and also the location of the famous Holtermann Gold Nugget (worth around $7 million) which was discovered in 1872.
The video commences with Matthew chipping away at the bank of the creek to collect some pay dirt in order to gold pan with.
Our best hopes were for a few specks of gold.
In my pocket I had a large fake gold nugget which was made from some molten lead (quite dense) and sprayed with gold paint.
As the fake gold nugget was quite large I had to secretly plant it amongst the other rocks, I encouraged Matthew to chip larger pieces.
Thankfully I was able to chip some large chunks myself and comment on the large size of the chunks I was chipping into the sieve.
Thankfully Matthew wasn't paying too close attention to the material I was chipping.
I then took the sieve and the pan to the water, while Matthew stayed chipping a more rocks.
I managed to get my youngest son away while I quickly planted the fake gold nugget amongst the pay dirt in the sieve (at time stamp 1:47).
Matthew then used the water and a shaking motion to clean the rocks and get the smaller chunks to pass through the sieve and into the pan.
My absolute favourite moment was at time stamp 2:18 when Matthew notices the gold nugget for the first time.
I've watched it 10 times and still laugh!
Matthew is in excited disbelief when he first picks up the chunk of gold.
He literally can't believe it!
He was very excited and his adrenaline was pumping.
In order to make the prank more real, I accused him of planting the nugget!
Eventually I told him it was a prank.
He wasn't happy!
It literally took him the rest of the day for him to forgive me!
