By Rhonda Bartle                   

You know when you first meet him he's an amiable human being. "Thought you'd never get here," he says with a smile.

It's a beautiful day in Opunake. You could admire the snow-less mountain if the shelterbelt around the Pettigrew House wasn't quite so high.

"Would you like to see the garden first?" your host says.

You could say Ian Stevenson, his house and his garden, all have feet in historic soil. After buying an old house in Ponderosa Place from the Pettigrew sisters in 1980, Stevenson inherited the remains of an old garden too, which included an ancient apple tree and a sprawling pōhutukawa.

"I think it's got about 30 trunks," he says, staring up into the massive branches. The apple tree planted a hundred years ago no longer gives 'a ton of fruit' as it used to when Stevenson first took over the place.

He shakes his head and notes wryly, "I've pruned and I've sprayed and never seen a crop like that again."

Additions and alterations

These days Stevenson is a museum keeper and gardener in unequal parts. "I said, one thing I'm absolutely certain of, I won't have a big garden." He waves his hand at more than half an hectare of careful planting. "And look at this."

But it could be argued that he enjoys his botanical treasures almost as much as he does the quirky and the old. While the original Pettigrew house still stands, it's now buried beneath a second storey.

Though it wasn't a major decision to use the old 35.5cms rock, dirt and lime walls for a base, Stevenson says it took him a long time to work out how to do it.

It's an interesting concept, building on the bones of an early settler house, but to all intents and purposes, it's been a success.

Today an internal lift carries guests to the upper floor, while banana palms stand sentry beside glassed exterior walls. He and second wife Rona live on the first floor, while the ground floor houses what he calls "museum stuff."

He met Rona when she was living across the street. "They used to make jokes," Rona says. "That we could have put a flying-fox from his house to mine or make a tunnel under the road."

Pettigrew Past

The Pettigrew house was built by an early settler who had come out from England. "He'd been in north Auckland for a few years and as soon as things settled down here in Taranaki as far as the Māori question was concerned, he bought a section and built this house. He became a roper, making rope out of flax.

"I had bought the land and I thought what am I going to do with the old dunger? People had been living in it, beggars and the like. We lived out on the farm at Pīhama and I thought we should move into town. Two years mucking around, I got some water pipes and filled them with concrete and put them round and up I go.

"All this bottom bit is the way it was, but I built the top storey on 20 years ago. The bottom bit's where the museum is. I haven't altered any of the structure in there."

A coastal bloke

Now nearing 80, Ian Stevenson is a coastal bloke, a farmer all his life, a man still keen on rugby.

"I played rugby for about 20 years, was captain for a few years and then chairman of the club. I'm still a member," he smiles, "but I don't play."

He first thought of opening a private museum after buying the old Bank of New Zealand in Tasman Street, Opunake.

"It would have been about 10 or 15 years ago, I suppose. I had plans for it and had already started putting stuff into it, but I ended up in hospital. Someone wanted to buy it so I sold it off. The stuff in the bank came back here, and it worked out all right."

After prolonged ill health knocked him around for a time, he is back on his feet in 2006 and happy to meet the public on his own territory.

One safe stone

Before stepping through the quaint portico Stevenson built over the door, he points out one of his favourite historical pieces.

"This stone is a Māori artefact I found in the Ōuri riverbed and it's been used for grinding fern roots. After a number of years this hole was worn through, so they flipped it over and started again on the other side."

The large upright stone also bears the marks of where new adze heads were ground and sharpened. As Stevenson runs his hands into all the nooks and crannies, he shares a museum keeper's story.

"Rigby Allen, a great historian who worked in the Taranaki Museum wanted to buy it off me. He used to come occasionally and tell me it would look good in the new museum. Anyway, I said, 'tell you what. If you can lift that up and carry it out to your truck it's yours.'

Very old ventifacs formed by the wind: From Puke Ariki Pictorial Collection.

A curious collection

Inside stands a handsome old display case which Stevenson says would the first thing he'd grab in a fire.

A reduntant and worn piece of museum furniture, given to him by Kelvin Day of Puke Ariki, Stevenson is very happy with the usefulness of the gift:  "That's the most valuable thing I think I've got here."

All around, treasures lie on every shelf and on the floor is a large assortment of relics. Stevenson knows every item well. He lifts the glass cabinet lid and lifts out a shiny jet-black stone.

"I've got lots of stones like this off the cliff at Waitōtara. Ventifacs formed by the wind. And see those things there? Strange clay and fine shells found at Opunake in 1995. I found those in a moa oven. I think it was an oven.

"They come from the sea but no one's ever really said what they are. I have land there I bought from Black Annie. You know Black Annie?"

Black Annie was an unlikely legend in early Opunake, terrorising kids and riding the chair-o-plane without her underwear on.

There are documents and ration books, a post office bank book. A honey pot from Ōaonui. There are nails from the Lord Worsley, the bell from the Northern Monarch, both wrecked dramatically off the coast. A poster explains what happened to the ill-fated Lizzie Bell.

L.Huggard's depiction of the Opunake redoubt in 1879: Image Puke Ariki Pictorial Collection.

Paintings and police whistles

On a high wall hang two paintings from a local artist, L. Huggard, one showing the barracks of Von Tempsky's Forest Rangers in 1879, the other a redoubt that once stood on the Opunake cliff overlooking the bay.

There are early police whistles, and a ball from a ball and chain, a Royal Doulton rose bowl that belonged to Rona's mother, photos of Stevenson's forebears scattered around the woodwork, a pair of Last Samurai premier tickets wedged into a frame.

A magnificent Stevenson family bible holds ancient birth certificates - and weighs a ton when you pick it up. "Imagine packing that to bring out with you when you emigrated," Stevenson says.

A beautiful Bible: A precious Stevenson family relic: Image Puke Ariki Pictorial Collection.

Not just family history

It's tempting to ask if the museum might merely be a convenient repository for family memorabilia, except even to the untrained eye it is so much more than that.

The room next door is filled to the picture rails with bottles, old clocks, Māori pounders, specimens of native wood. Yellowed copies of the Taranaki Herald line the walls.

A map of coastal south Taranaki, found wet in a carshed, shows how Rahotu township was meant to be bigger than Opunake and should have been known as the cathedral town.

Treasures abound: A cluttered corner of Stevenson's museum. Image Puke Ariki Pictorial Collection.

Bottles and boxthorn hedges

Stevenson says he's been collecting things for more than 70 years, including pieces of derelict vehicles found under boxthorn hedges. "I found bits of an old car. They're in the museum. I usually keep my eyes open."

Pretty much anything that's come his way has been allowed to stay, though his bottle collection is a little more personal. It's how his museum began.

"I did a lot of digging for old bottles at one stage. I found out that on the farm I was on, there had been housing and a dump, though trees had grown over the top. I found by digging and scratching underneath them you could shift those trees without doing any damage. It ended up like Aladdin's cave in there."

Treasures on show

A very young Ian Stevenson found bottles and "a real nice cup, with gold bands around it, that you used to get from the side shows in the old days," which he gave away to someone he knew was interested in such things.

These days people arrive just to look. Some have been before and they bring others back with them.

Sometimes they come in busloads and make it upstairs for a cup of tea before being personally guided round the garden or through the museum.

Everything is on view and not hidden away. "I've been interested in history all my life," Stevenson says. His intention, as always, is to share it.