Hubble Bubble Toil and Trouble in ROTORUA

FRYING PAN LAKE- Waimungu Valley

From the moment you enter Rotorua, you know you are somewhere quite different. Sneaky threads of steam issue from parks, pathways and streets and the occasional scent of sulphur wafts through the air—a hint of what's in store.

And you don't need to look far. Minutes from the Rotorua city centre, geysers of steaming water roar from the ground. Pools of bubbling mud gurgle and belch. In geothermal fields around Rotorua, steam rises from placid lakes and flowing streams. Dazzling silica terraces display a kaleidoscope of colour. Towering volcanoes, now sleeping giants, are unmistakable reminders of the landscape's turbulent past.

Waimangu Valley was formed during the eruption of Mount Tarawera (10 June 1886). During the 1880's this area was most famed for the Pink and White terraces, on the shores of Lake Rotomahana. Their tiers of delicately tinted silica and cascading hot pools were considered one of the wonders of the world. There was little idea that the mountain that overlooked the valley was about to or ever could erupt. In the days before Mt Tarawera erupted there was an increase in hot spring activity, but otherwise there were no warning signs. Eleven days before, however, Māori and Pākehā tourists reported a phantom Māori war canoe sailing across Lake Tarawera, and surges in the water.

A series of violent earthquakes at midnight was followed by the eruption of Mount Tarawera. by 2.30 a.m. the craters along the summit were venting fountains of glowing scoria and a cloud of ash up to 10 kilometres high, through which intense lightning flickered. At 3.20 a.m. the explosions spread. Craters were blasted open on the south-west side of the mountain and through Lake Rotomahana and the Waimangu area. A 17-kilometre rift spewed steam, mud and ash.

By morning the eruption was over but not before taking the lives of 120 people. The landscape around Rotomahana and Tarawera was stripped of vegetation. Thick mud and ash blanketed hundreds of square kilometres of land, and large cracks crossed the region. The Pink and White Terraces had vanished, reduced to dust and fragments of sinter.

 

The site of the terraces became a crater over 100 metres deep. Steam eruptions continued in the crater for several months, but within 15 years it filled with water, forming a new Lake Rotomahana, much larger than its predecessor. The chain of craters at the Waimangu end of the rift became the site of many new geothermal features, including Waimangu Geyser, the largest in the world, and New Zealand’s largest hot spring, Frying Pan Lake.