Leaving aside the issue of the vessel's form for the moment, it isn't even stoneware.
 
From the photograph, it looks very much like a whiteware object rather than a stoneware object - in other words it's refined whitebodied earthenware.   Assuming the assemblage is typically Australian, the bottles it was found with - presumably all buff- or brown-bodied saltglazed - are, on the other hand, certainly stoneware.
 
For what it's worth, that would also make the object British-made rather than Australian.
 
As to the form and decoration, notwithstanding Ron's dogfood bowl theory, if the supposition that it did have a lid is correct then - with that combination of overglaze gilt and moulded decoration - my first reaction would be to lean towards it being toiletries-related.
 
I see nothing in the decoration incompatible with it being very late 19th-century.  Irrespective of the date, I think I can however safely say - with some degree of confidence - that it's pretty damn ugly.
 
Alasdair Brooks
 
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This stoneware dish was found in Australia during earth moving on a
building site for a new house. It was in a layer that also contained ceramic
ginger beer bottles that date from around the 1880s. Nothing more
recent was found.

http://www.box.net/shared/static/1a56q6mipm.JPG

The dish must have had a lid that rested on its internal rim. There are no maker's
marks.

My neighbour is asking me - because I am a forensic archaeologist. I have told
him that the gold design looks too abstract to date from the period of
the 1880s. I would have guessed the dish is no earlier than the 1920s.

Is my impression correct?