10 Dollars - Elizabeth II 4th Portrait, Gold Rushes - Otago

The Otago gold rush of 1861 was triggered when Gabriel Read, an experienced prospector who had worked the California fields, found gold at a site he described as shining "like the stars in Orion on a dark frosty night." The find at Gabriels Gully transformed the South Island almost overnight — Dunedin's population exploded, and Otago briefly became the wealthiest province in the country, financing much of the infrastructure that defined colonial New Zealand's economic centre of gravity shifting decisively south.

This issue is part of a four-coin series commemorating New Zealand's major gold rushes, paired with Thames, Coromandel, and West Coast releases of the same year.