A young Aussie has revealed the moment her incredibly lucky friend discovered a rare treasure ‘on the ground’ by complete chance during a bush walk which made them $20,000 richer. The 146-gram heart-shaped nugget of gold was sitting on the top of the ground where the local prospector was walking in the bush.

“146-gram nugget was a ‘sunbaker’,” Tyler Mahoney explained since the nugget of gold was found on the soil's surface in the outback gold-mining town of Kalgoorlie, 600km northeast of Perth, WA.

The 28-year-old is a fourth-generation gold prospector, who earlier this year told Yahoo she sold a mammoth nugget of her own for a whopping $9,500. Mahoney said she couldn’t believe the luck of her friend given how rare it is to find treasure by complete accident.

“The local prospector that found this found it sitting on top of the ground as they were walking through the bush. Could you imagine!” she said. After cleaning up the nugget, Mahoney remarked that it was “looking stun” with hundreds of social media followers in awe of the rare find.

The 28-year-old, who starred in the reality TV show Gold Rush, traditionally uses her metal detector to strike gold.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, Mahony said “Every day is different and it depends on what we are finding. It's not a secure income at all. Some days it's baked beans and some days it's lobster,' she explained.

And despite her mate’s lucky find on the ground, she says “To be a prospector you need to know how to read the ground and follow the gold.”

Speaking to Yahoo previously, Mahoney said there can be some "pretty dodgy people in the gold game". But the full-time prospector said she's lucky to have built up an audience that "trusts and knows" her. The youngster has garnered a social media following of over 200k followers who tune in daily to watch and learn from what she does.

On any given day Mahoney can be driving an excavator or separating gold from dirt using a heavy-duty dry blower. But working as a prospector, particularly in Australia, involves a lot of research too.

"Prospecting is the search of gold before you mine it, there's a lot of reading the ground. We do a lot of research looking at geology and topography," she explained.

Mahoney, who's also written a book about her adventures, admits it's "really addictive," despite the sometimes 40-degree weather she has to contend with. But a lot has changed since her great-grandfather began mining for gold many decades ago.