Witi Ihimaera: Roimata Toroa

I’ve been urbanised so much that coming back is always like a healing, a renewal. It's both a sad and happy occasion.

– Witi Ihimaera on returning to the East Coast of his childhood

Greenstone also has within its depths what we call the ‘roimata toroa’: which is the tears of the albatross. And in those times in the 1970s … 1960s, I could see a whole life disappearing, and to me that seemed to be within these tears of the albatross, right within the greenstone…

– Witi Ihimaera on finding inspiration in his childhood