Instead, what they found last week included a number of quartz specimen stones, the largest of which weighed 95 kilograms, encrusted with glittering, instantly-recognisable yellow gold.

"I think the hype is more or less about the two large rocks that we did find, and the combined weight of those rocks is in excess of 150 kilograms.

"What we would estimate is that 80 per cent of that would be gold, pure gold."

Mr Vinar said the mine contains a lot of these types of rocks due to the tectonic activity in the area, but the difficulty is in locating where large deposits of gold might be.

"What we find is that we've got a lot of shearing, a lot of fault, but it's not everywhere. We've got a lot of these rocks around the mine, but pinpointing specifically this amazing gold find is a rarity. It involves more luck."

He's confident that their luck won't run out too soon.

"We've had two hits so far on this level, so fingers crossed. We've had some juicy rocks on the level above us."

The mine, owned by Canadian company Royal Nickel Corporation (RNC), has predominantly mined nickel, but the company is ramping up its gold production.

Mr Vinar said they are exploring areas of the mine - discovered in 1966 by Western Mining, who mined it for nickel until the late 90s - without fully knowing its history.

"We have a lot of historical information by people's word of mouth, some old plans that suggest there was specimen stone about in the nickel stopes [an open space left behind by extractions]. But we weren't really expecting to find this in this area, so when we came across it and we also hit it on the 15 level, that made us rethink a bit more about what the potential might be."

Interestingly, there was no drill result to tell the miners there might be high grade gold there, he said.

"The geologist went in, he cut across some rocks that looked vaguely familiar and happened to spot some gold underground. He decided to have a look, open up the rock and bang – there she was."