The new knowledge that New Zealand is not just a group of small SW Pacific islands, but rather the emergent part of the 4.9 Mkm2 largely submerged continent Zealandia (Figure 1), provides new and exciting insights into mineral deposit formation in New Zealand. The country is host to two world-class gold deposits, the Miocene epithermal Martha mine in the North Island, and the Cretaceous orogenic Macraes mine in the South Island. While both these deposits were discovered and first mined in the late 19th century, only one new economically significant hard-rock gold deposit, the Sams Creek intrusion-related gold deposit in west Nelson, has been discovered (1988) in New Zealand through modern Greenfields exploration. Why? Have explorers been looking in the wrong places, or with the wrong models or are there no more to be found? This short paper suggests a fresh way to look at New Zealand mineral prospectivity. CITATION: Smillie, R W, Christie, A B, Durance, P M J, Hill, P, Martin, A P, Mortimer, N, Rattenbury, M S, Tulloch, A J and Turnbull, R E, 2019. The mineral systems of the Zealandia continent: 500 million years and counting, in Proceedings PACRIM 2019, pp 300302 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).