With each sign also bearing one of five elements, 2021 is the Year of the Metal Ox.

Metal is key for another milestone celebrated yesterday - the 170th anniversary of the discovery of payable gold in New South Wales, not far from Orange at Lewis Ponds, the site that soon became known as Ophir, the fabled city of gold.

Flecks of Gold were discovered in New South Wales as early as 1923. The official date of 12 February 1851 marks Edward Hammond Hargraves' find, which was officially rewarded by the New South Wales government at the time.

There are, however, several other claimants to the prize, not least Hargraves' own assistants, John Lister and William and James Tom.

Another, geologist William Tipple-Smith, was only given recognition in 2019, 170 years after he found gold, also at Ophir, in 1849.

But it was the news of Hargraves' find and another at Lucknow shortly after that spurred the gold rushes and with them a large wave of Chinese migration.

The influx of Chinese labour also meant new cultural traditions - like Lunar New Year - and the Orange Regional Museum's local history exhibition 'Inherit: old and new histories' has some remarkable objects that relate to gold and the proliferation of Chinese culture on the goldfields.

In the exhibition you'll find a set of scales used at Ophir during the 1850s, on loan from the Orange & District Historical Society.

Nearby is a ceramic soy sauce bottle, found on 'Greenbrook' Station, near Blayney, where Chinese miners worked the creek from as early as 1866.

Another selection of objects from the site of the Ophir diggings includes a police whistle, gun barrel, opium tin, medicine bottle, clasps, brooches, buttons and a thimble.

The variety of objects provides a captivating glimpse into the diversity of people who converged on the goldfields.

Chinese coins found at the site attest to Chinese gambling traditions, the coins being used in "Pak ah pu" or "my pow Chong", commonly known as the "Chinese lottery", and Fan Tan, which was played in the Orange, Blayney and Cabonne regions.

You can discover these remarkable objects and many more in 'Inherit: old and new histories', now on show at the Orange Regional Museum.

Information for Orange Museum