Revas On The Waterfront

When Reva and Doug Meredith opened the first Revas in 1976, it was just a little hole-in-the-wall pizza joint in downtown Whangarei. But thanks to Revas legendary hospitality, and her love of delicious food, live music and local art, Revas 'Pizza Palour' soon became the meeting place for local musicians, artists, travellers and anyone who appreciated great food, great company and a great time.

"See you at Revas" became the farewell cry as cruising yachts left foreign ports to cross the Southern Ocean. In 1988, the pizza joint became a licensed restaurant in a new premises near the waterfront.

In 1995, Reva and Doug were invited to open Whangarei's first waterfront restaurant in the new Town Basin development - Revas on the Waterfront was born - and the rest is history.

We went for a coffee after the trip on Friday afternoon.

 

And the coffee - art in a cup

A Village Called Whangara

Earlier in the week I went to Whangara (wh is pronounced f): a village 29 km North of Gisborne on New Zealand's North East coast. It is the home of a Maori tribe known as Ngati Kanohi, whose earliest ancestor arrived on the back of a whale. This is where the book and film Whalerider is set (and shot) and the people of Whangara are the people you see on the screen. They're whale people. They have lived on that piece of land for a thousand years. Their sense of matemate-a-one is very is very strong In Maori culture the phenomenon of matemate-a-one describes the sickness experienced when parted from tribal land—a grieving for place. It is beyond love. It's a sickness that affects the mind and the soul, a primal response to and a craving for a particular place. For home.

We didn't go down into the Village because so many people do that it would, to us, have felt like an invasion of privacy. So I contented myself with a feeling of the place and photos from above using my telephoto lens.