This pilot house at Wairau Bar was built in 1868, when many ships used the lower Wairau and Ōpawa rivers, and needed guidance crossing the bar from or into Cloudy Bay. The house was the home of pilot James Bulliff, his wife Clara and their children for 18 years. Bulliff’s successor moved into a new house next door, but the original building was in use for many years. It remains Marlborough’s best-preserved survivor of the coastal shipping days of the 19th century.