Doctor Marie-Louise Ayres, National Library of Australia curator of manuscripts, was working quietly at her terminal in the reading room when the literary equivalent of a Lotto jackpot lobbed into her inbox.
She admitted her jaw dropped and she gasped out loud.
"I opened the email and I know I just went `Ooooooh'. People looked at me. I was just amazed," she recalled.
With good reason, for that email announced the existence of a treasure trove of unpublished manuscripts, notes, correspondence and memorabilia of Patrick White, Australian's only Nobel Prize winner for literature and the nation's most important novelist.
Up to that instant, that stash had remained a secret to all but White's literary executor Barbara Mobbs.
The curmudgeonly White, who died in 1990, successfully convinced the world that there was no literary legacy as he'd burnt the lot.
On his death, that material passed to his partner of 49 years Manoly Lascaris.
And on Lascaris' death three years ago, it passed to Ms Mobbs who offered it to the National Library back in August.
An unspecified sum changed hands and the documents now reside in the library as perhaps its literary jewel in the crown.
"I have no doubt this will be the major acquisition of my career and it is so sweet that it is in Australian literature, which is what my PhD is in," a delighted Dr Ayres said.
The collection runs to thousands of documents and fills 33 archive boxes.
Most attention has focused on the unpublished novels The Binoculars and Helen Neil and The Hanging Gardens, but it also includes homely domestic details including a hand-written menu for a week (Monday - chicken, Tuesday - lentils) and his recipes - perhaps enough for a literary cookbook.
Among his letters are the acerbic, dismissing longstanding friendships with a sweep of the pen. One reply begins: "You are an ass".
Dr Ayres spent a full week reading and reviewing the material when it first arrived.
For the last week, 10 members of the library manuscript section have perused the collection.
All were appropriately awe-struck.
"I don't think we have had smiles off our faces for all this time. And we have actually had to keep it a secret which has been really difficult," she said.
Now the word is well and truly out in the literary community.
"At quarter to nine this morning I had the first call from senior academics proposing a project to do with scholarly editing of the 10 notebooks," Dr Ayres said.