But Pete Sparrow is going one step further this week by showing off his "family submarine".
The 10m-long, iron-plate Platypus submarine is looking a little worse for wear and is no longer watertight, to be expected considering it is 150 years old.
Yet, Mr Sparrow still lays some claim to it because it was built by his great-grandfather Joseph Sparrow and Dunedin iron shipbuilders and boilermakers business partner William Thomas, in 1873.
It has now been partially restored and will be unveiled in its new Middlemarch enclosure this weekend, to celebrate its 150th birthday.
Mr Sparrow said the sub was originally designed to dig and sluice directly from the gold-rich Otago riverbeds, and was first launched in Otago Harbour with much fanfare.
Unfortunately, its first test was a flop and the submarine had to be towed out of the harbour.
The second time, it appeared to work well, and the occupants managed to collect material from the harbour floor, but the third time, the passengers again needed to be hauled back up.
After the failure of the third test, investors lost interest and the submarine was left on the banks of Pelichet Bay (now reclaimed as Logan Park) from 1874 until it was removed due to the arrival of the South Seas Exhibition in 1924.
Mr Sparrow said during this time his great-grandfather’s engineering firm cut the sub into sections and modified the middle section of the Platypus in 1882 for the McLeod’s Soap Works.
It was believed the middle section formed a reservoir which held 25 tons of tallow during the soap-making process.
The end pieces ended up at Barewood sheep and cattle station, storing water.
Then in 1991, the remains were donated to the Strath Taieri Historical Society in Middlemarch.
Mr Sparrow said experts around the globe estimated it was one of the six oldest surviving submarines.
Strath Taieri Historical Society vice-president Keith Harris said funding from community businesses and organisations had allowed the society to restore much of the submarine.
"There are parts of it that are gone forever," Mr Harris said.
"It’s authentic in that we haven’t tried to replicate the parts that are missing.
"This is what was left of it, but it has been put together so that you can appreciate the actual size of it and how it all worked. There are also interpretive panels to show what is missing.
"It’s been a long time coming."
The celebration starts at 1pm on Sunday, outside the society’s Middlemarch premises.
