Home of Janet Frame in Oamaru

Back to our visit to Oamaru.

After some lunch we ventured down  to 56 Eden Street just west of our hostel to visit the childhood home of Janet Frame.  We had met the fellow who is the curator here at the radio museum earlier in the day. 

The house is a snug bungalow on a large lot with an abundant garden behind the house. Janet Frame, born in 1923, lived here from 1931 to 1943.

While some of the furnishings are simply of the era in which she resided there, some of the pieces were hers, such as the desk, the bed, etc., but the visit was a great way to transport us to the era and place about which she wrote.

We spent a casual time going through the house and enjoying the furnishings and fixtures -not that different from the world in which I grew up in- and reading little excerpts from her writings which were posted on the wall.

The entryway

We were greeted by the resident cat who shows up each day to guide tourists through the house

The bedroom

As she had two older sisters, this could have been their room or her parents' room.
 Notice the school uniform in the wardrobe.

A child's cot in the bedroom, possibly Janet's

The sitting room

The cozy living room include a behemoth radio, so typical of the times, where the family would likely gather to hear updates on the war.

Also typical of the era was this sewing machine. People in more remote places, whether in rural America or southern New Zealand, tended to make what they needed.

The kitchen

A wood stove provided for daily cooking and heat for the kitchen.  No central heating in NZ; even today it is uncommon.

Janet's workroom/study

Frame's desk where she wrote some of her early fiction.  Lolly tries to capture the  muse by sitting at h desk and typewriter.

Museum office

We bought a copy of Frame's three volume autobiography and the curator, Ralph Sherwood, signed it for us as a memento.

The garden

The lot behind the house was quite large.  I am sure the Frame's like many other families of the time and place grew a lot of their sustenance.

Back to our hostel

Just as we left the house, a light rain began to fall.  We hurried down the street to our cozy abode and settled in for a cupa at the Red Kettle.

The first part of her biography is titled: To the Is-Land.  I really love her writing and would have never discovered it, but for our visit to Oamaru.  I've read a collection of short stories, a book of poems (The Pocket Mirror) and bits of her An Autobiography.  Her style has been characterized as magical realism. I love it.  Take for example the first line of  To the Is-Land:

"From the first place of liquid darkness, within the second place of air and light, I set down the following record with its mixture of act and truths and memories of truths and its direction always toward the Third Place, where the starting point is myth."