Paua House

Rach and I decided to be cultured and we went to the local museum, the Canterbury Museum. We’d seen advertised an exhibition that we thought looked interesting. A couple down in Bluff (a tiny township, the main jumping-off point for Stewart Island), who have passed away a few years ago, had a rather unique house, and their family donated the contents of the house to the museum. I thought that they had actually donated the house and that had been transported to the museum – well that’s what Beamish Museum does. What the museum had done was to recreate the house and then they moved the contents of the lounge and hall into the built house. It all started years ago when Fred collected and polished Paua shells. Now Myrtle being a woman got annoyed as they where starting to cover the floor and hovering was becoming difficult, so she asked Fred to move them. So he put them on the wall. Over the period of a few years, all the walls in the lounge were covered by polished paua shells. They became celebs in their own right and opened up their house to the general public and even had coach loads of people through. Over about 37 years, 1 million visitors had looked at the paua shells. It was really unusual and I wish I’d had my camera with me.

From the Museum Website: Fred & Myrtle’s Paua Shell House at Canterbury Museum
Hear the extraordinary story of an ordinary Kiwi couple in a short film, explaining the kiwiana phenomenon and how a Bluff couple with an unusual living room came to be New Zealand icons. Then, step through the front door and into the famous paua shell lounge of Fred and Myrtle Flutey.