Museum Victoria mineral specimens from Victoria: Corundum (sapphire)

Corundum (sapphire). Registration no. M 20886.

Museum Victoria's mineralogy collection is the largest and most species-diverse mineral collection in Australia, containing examples of approximately 60% of known minerals. The emphasis of the collection is on Victorian and Australian minerals which represent around 50% of the collection but it also contains comparative material from around the world and species not found in Australia. The Collection's origins can be traced to the period immediately following the discovery of rich goldfields in the newly formed colony of Victoria with the establishment of the Geological Survey of Victoria in 1853, the National Museum of Victoria in 1854 and the University of Melbourne in 1856. Today the collection is an amalgamation of these three collections plus two other state institutional collections; those of the Industrial and Technological Museum and the Science Museum of Victoria.