True love
Christchurch today and I had the opportunity to visit the Paua shell house at the Canterbury Museum.
Fred and Myrtle Flutey were the remarkable couple from Bluff at the bottom of the South Island New Zealand who became famous for their unusual living room when they decorated it with Kiwiana. Most notably they decorated their living room with paua shells that Fred had collected and polished to bring out their beautiful colours. (Paua is a species of abalone found only in New Zealand) In 1961 Myrtle started putting them on the walls. Over the years around one million visitors came to their Bluff home to see the paua shells. The shells are on loan to the Museum for 5 years.
But the remarkable thing about Fred and Myrtle was not their paua shell collection. It’s the love that leads to a couple being happily married for over 70 years, working on a project together for more than 45 years, loving what they do so much that they shared it with so many other people, and without ever charging a single penny for people to see it. That is love.