At 42 St George's Bay Rd is an immense ramshackle house that was a famously proper girls' school, Melmerley Collegiate School. Alumni include Princess Te Puea Herangi, Gloria Rawlinson and, until her family fell on hard times, Jean Batten. It's now known as The Big House and occupied by students, locals and people from around the world have lived here. Mixed of ethnicity and talents of people plus the system of the house makes the Big House a unique and one and only flatting house in New Zealand.