Googling restoring cutting boards told me I should be looking for "USP-grade mineral oil" for finishing it, and the cheapest place to buy this is the "drug store" (http://whatscookingamerica.net/CuttingBoards/AllAbout.htm). Translating this to Kiwi, I rang the mall chemist and asked them if they stocked mineral oil. "Uh, mineral oil?" came the response, in the exact same tone of voice as Manuel's in Fawlty Towers when he answers everything with "Que?". I didn't have any luck until more googling had translated "USP-grade mineral oil" into "paraffin oil" and I tried a second chemist where they stocked botttles of "liquid paraffin". The assistant wasn't at all sure that it was an oil, but I decided to risk buying it anyway.

So here's the cutting board before:



And here it is just after sanding and oiling with what I am fairly confident is USP-grade mineral oil:



There were some deep knife (cleaver? MACHETE?!) marks that weren't going to be sanded out in a hurry, but I'm not worrying about those yet.
The liquid paraffin cost $8 for 200ml, so I don't think it's exactly the cheapest option, seeing as the  link above says that coconut oil is fine too, and I can get a 700ml bottle of that for $6.99.  The board soaked up about 15 ml of paraffin oil on this application.

For anghed , Crown Lynn is an iconic NZ ceramics manufacturer  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Lynn).  In 1965 they bought out the Titian factory.  There's a tiny pic here, from the book "Crown Lynn: a New Zealand Icon" by Valerie Ringer Monk:



It's (too) easy to find, I mostly pay 50c a piece at op-shops.  It's not flash like Script's "flow blue".  And... it's not French onion soup, but I do have the onion dip bowl! It was the onion dip bowl that got me started, actually--I was looking for a small bowl to put hummus in and saw this little honey glaze bowl for 50c in an op shop. The following week I saw a honey glaze soup mug with tall-stemmed flowers around the side and bought that to go with the big pot of vegetable barley soup I was living on that week. And that's how my collecting started. But! I am running out of designated room, so I have to be more picky now or it will just become a hoard.
Edited to add: Just wanted to note that running around searching for oil-love for the board, along with usual activities, bought my steps total to 13,673 my second highest day yet! (The highest was Christmas Eve when I topped 15K.)