Searching for the location of the Great Feast of Remuera

6.30pm, Friday 12 August 2022

Remuera Library

So where exactly was the location site of the Great Feast in 1844 at Remuera? What do we know now two years after the Great Feast booklet was published? People have contacted us with their views…

Join Tony Batistich, geospatial whizz and heritage geographer, to hear where we have got to – have we identified the real location of the great feast at last?

Tony says: “All Remuera Heritage geospatial projects are enticing and absorbing but this one on the site of the Great Feast in 1844, at Remuera, has been especially so. In this type of research, there is no one correct interpretation which is its great intrigue. Any of the 4 or 5 sites presented so far could well be right. Some may be just give an added hint of direction to our thinking.  Even the ‘facts’ presented after the event can be disputable as they are mostly not eye-witness accounts, but ‘hand-me-downs’ often in newspapers. Often you are dealing with artistic and possibly journalistic licence.

Which means when you put it all in the melting pot using current digital datasets, and when you absorb all of the information and misinformation, you still have to broaden your thinking  and mental images backwards through the last 180 years of changing landscapes. Do you get answers or just more questions?  Are the digital processes distorting the truth? Is it at all logical?  Are some of the commentaries on the location impossible?  And when you have it all sorted in your own mind someone comes up with a telling interpretation that changes the whole scene…. And so you start again…. But it doesn’t matter; it’s both a challenging intellectual exercise and a journey to discover the real location of the Great Feast at Remuera!”

Come share the journey.  “If you don’t know where you are going any road will take you there” [anon]

The Great Mãori Feast at Remuera book is available for sale on the night for $10.

Light refreshments provided: Members $5; non-members $10.

Copies of the booklet are also available for $10 & P&P from Remuera Heritage info@remueraheritage.org.nz