Fox, from the United States, spent three weeks combing the park’s 37.5-acre search area, one of the world’s only public diamond-producing sites where visitors can keep what they find. Her partner had agreed to postpone proposing until she could locate a diamond herself – a quest she began planning two years ago.

After completing graduate school, Fox took a month-long break to begin the search on July 8. On July 29, while walking along the park’s West Drain, she spotted a glittering object at her feet. Initially mistaking it for a spiderweb, she nudged it with her boot before realising it was a diamond.

“I got on my knees and cried, then started laughing,” she said. The gemstone, about the size of a human canine tooth, was confirmed by the park’s Diamond Discovery Center as a white diamond weighing 2.3 carats – the third-largest found at the site in 2025.

Fox named it the “Fox-Ballou Diamond” after her and her partner’s surnames. “After all the research, there’s luck and there’s hard work,” she said. “When you are literally picking up the dirt in your hands, no amount of research can do that for you.”

So far this year, more than 366 diamonds have been registered at the park, 11 of them weighing over one carat.