Mr Humphryson said predicting when a commercial gold discovery could be declared was “the million-dollar question”.
“I don’t want to put a time frame on it. This resource is probably unique in the world,” he said.
“These types of deposits are notoriously difficult to put a resource around because they are very coarse.”
Mr Humphryson said Novo would focus its exploration on the Comet Wells and Purdy’s Reward joint venture projects over the next six months.
“Within six months we will probably have a far better feel for what we have, but almost daily we are picking up new geographical information,” he said.
Shares in Novo, which is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, soared 700 per cent between July and October as it publicised the discovery of watermelon seed-shaped nuggets in shallow rock south of Karratha.
The theory is that the Pilbara Craton is geologically linked to the Kaapvaal Craton in South Africa where the world’s biggest gold resource, the Witwatersrand Basin, is found.
The idea has sent the share prices of a swag of Pilbara explorers with tenements in the area surging, but the frenzy has eased in recent weeks after Novo revealed it was experiencing difficulties proving up a resource using wide-diameter drilling. It said it would instead focus on trenching as a means of securing large bulk samples.
Mr Humphryson said the company had been surprised by the extent of investor excitement around the Pilbara gold story.
“A few months before it broke we felt like rock stars with a hit album no one had heard yet,” he said.
“We knew we were on to something special but the extent to which it has been picked up has probably taken us by surprise.”
Mr Humphryson said some of the smaller explorers that had rallied hard on the back of the conglomerate gold story seemed to be “on to the right stuff”.
“The nuggets they show look like they are coming from the same material — stratigraphically it looks the same,” he said.
“They just need to take into account that traditionally in Australia, in the greenstone belts, gold deposits are about ounces per vertical metre, this is about ounces per square metre or kilometre because it is very flat lying in a marine sedimentary-type environment.”