Toitu Otago Settlers Museum

Toitu is a social history museum rather than a general one, and its subject is migration into Otago - Kai Tahu first, then the Scottish Free Church settlers of 1848, then the very large influx of the 1860s gold rush including several thousand Chinese miners, then everyone since. The Smith Gallery is the piece people remember: a wall of Victorian settler portraits, hundreds of faces staring out, collected by the Early Settlers Association from the families themselves. Elsewhere are the Josephine, a double-Fairlie locomotive of 1872 housed indoors, immigrant ship material, a 1950s and 60s section, and a gallery on the Chinese goldfield community that does not soften how they were treated. The building combines the 1908 art deco New Zealand Railways bus station with modern extensions. Entry is free, which for a museum of this quality is unusual, and it sits beside the Chinese Garden and the railway station.

What you actually see

• The Smith Gallery - hundreds of Victorian settler portraits on one wall.
• The Josephine - an 1872 double-Fairlie locomotive, indoors.
• The Chinese goldfields gallery - the community and its treatment.
• The art deco bus station - the 1908 building at the core.

When to go

Any season - indoors and free, so a reliable wet-weather option. Allow longer than expected; it is bigger than it looks from the street.

Honest expectations

Free, with donations invited. It is a social history museum - documents, photographs and objects rather than spectacle. The Chinese goldfields material is uncomfortable by design.

Nearby

The Dunedin Chinese Garden is next door; the railway station and the Octagon are minutes away.