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This is a gold nugget (approximately 3.4 cm x 2.2 cm), which was probably found in about 1865 on a goldfield in Otago (in the southern South Island of New Zealand).
This asset indicates that gold was found in New Zealand in the 1860s - the largest gold rush was in the Province of Otago after Gabriel Read struck gold at Gabriel's Gully near Tuapeka in 1861.
It is a product of an important industry in the development of New Zealand society in the mid-1800s.
It was displayed in Wellington's Colonial Museum in the 1870s, with other samples of gold, as an educational aid to intended miners - even though gold mining had become unprofitable for independent miners and most of the fields had been stripped bare.