Miners in Australia unearth huge gold-encrusted rocks worth $11m

Miners in western Australia last week unearthed two massive gold encrusted rocks estimated to be worth millions of dollars, a find geologists are calling a “once in a century discovery.”

Canadian company RNC Minerals on Monday said its miners discovered the unusual quartz rocks 500 meters below the surface at its Beta Hunt facility near the town of Kambalda last week.

RNC said the larger rock weighs 95 kilograms and contains some 2,440 ounces of high-grade gold, and a second, 63 kilogram rock contains an estimated 1,620 ounces of gold.

“Recovering 9,250 ounces of high grade coarse gold from a single cut on the 15 level at our Beta Hunt mine, including specimens which could rank among the largest ever discovered, underlines the importance of this discovery,” RNC chief executive Mark Selby said in a statement.

Selby said the rare rocks would be auctioned as collectors items.

Some miners in Australia are striking it rich! They've discovered a huge Gold deposit with rocks filled with Gold! Some of them are so big that 3 people had to carry them out, still sounds more hard work than Dig That Gold! #Gold #24K #Australia #Treasure pic.twitter.com/oOLAm5VxdR

— Dig That Gold (@digthatgold) September 10, 2018

Senior geologist Zaf Thanos told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation the find at Beta Hut was “a once-in-a-lifetime discovery.”

“You might go your whole life and you’ll never see anything like it. It’s definitely a once-in-a-lifetime discovery,” he said. “This sort of bonanza is incredibly unique.”

Professor Sam Spearing, director of the Western Australia School of Mines at Curtin University, called the high concentration of gold discovered “exceedingly rare.”

“People do still record finding nuggets in the goldfields, but typically they are less than several ounces,” he said.

“Very, very seldom do we see results on that level,” Spearing added. “This is an exceedingly rare find and very exciting.”