When was mt tarawera eruption

In Auckland, duty police, nightwatchmen and crews in the harbour heard what they took to be signals from a ship in trouble off Takapuna or even aground at the Manukau Heads. The Pukekohe stationmaster saw what he took to be rockets to the south. Concussions, the noise of distant artillery, quakes, electrical activity in the heavens.

One of the clearest views of proceedings was had by Henry Roche, leader of a team surveying a new railway route. Roche and his men were camped beside a stream at Te Puna-a-Tuhoe, four kilometres or so north of Ohinemutu. The night was clear and cold with the promise of a hard frost.

Shortly after 2 A. Fearing his tent would be blown flat, he sprang outside to find stars shining and no sign of a storm. Over the eastern side of Ruawahia he noticed a high, thin column of smoke forming a mushroom cloud. The rapidly growing cloud then drifted westward, leaving the mountain clearly visible. The whole mountain appeared to crack open. We then beheld the striking spectacle of a dark, flat-topped mountain more than a mile long, red hot along its crest, and surmounted by a wall of fire 1, ft high.

In the pale dawn twilight the dramatic electrical activity over the mountain could be seen to continue unabated. The blanket of sulphurous dust that engulfed the surveyors at Te Puna-a-Tuhoe reached the coast by early morning, plunging Tauranga into darkness.

The fine particles blinded those who tried to force a way through and obliged shopkeepers who had ventured to open for business to close again. The town was brought to a standstill, with people unable at times to see their hands before their faces without the aid of lamps and candles. The mayor contemplated an evacuation of the borough, contacting Auckland by telegram to see whether a steamer were available for that eventuality.

At nearby Te Puke, where some 72 earthquake shocks had been felt through the night, the ground lay covered in slate-grey ash to a depth of 8—10 cm, and ash had to be scraped off windows with a hoe.

Reports later came in that, almost km out at sea, the London-bound SS Waimea had also been struck by falls of blinding dust. For those at Te Wairoa who braved the cold evening of June 9 to watch it, the conjunction of Mars by the moon at Storekeeper John Falloona spent the evening playing cards.

Others wound wool or played chess. One by one they retired to their beds, Blythe, pausing on a creeper-entwined verandah, remarking on the beautiful night and predicting a fine day on the morrow.

Just after midnight came the first ground shudders. One quick-witted observer judged from the swinging of a ham that the shocks originated from the direction of Tarawera. There, above the triple summit, a great cloud-curtain was rising, tinged saffron and orange on its underside.

From time to time the spctators saw flaming rocks issue from the cloud and plunge with a splash into the water below. Higher up the hillside, McRae, Bainbridge and others, who had made their way to the old mission station, were suddenly thrown to the ground by a sharp jolt. They picked themselves up and, as rolling cloud began to extinguish the stars, retraced their steps to the hotel, gathering stragglers on the way. It had grown bitterly cold, and, thinking to make cocoa, McRae found that water on the blazing stove could not be coaxed to boil.

Instead, he offered a stiff tot of whisky or port to each of the dozen or more shaken refugees about him. Then a din erupted as hot stones began smashing windows and striking the kitchen roof overhead. Outside, the wind was blowing hard and swirling in all directions, though it could hardly be heard for the crash of plummeting scoria and the roar of the mountain. The party moved from room to room, amid a sulphurous stench, seeking safety Venturing upstairs with a lantern, McRae and Humphreys saw a red-hot rock smash into a bed, setting fire to the blankets.

The two men extinguished the flames, but with the ceiling now bulging under the weight of falling debris, they retreated down the stairs just as the roof collapsed. The guests quickly abandoned their unsafe quarters and withdrew along the verandah to the drawing room. A strong wind blowing through the jammed door prevented a lamp being lit, so, in a profound darkness relieved only by the intermittent flicker of lightning, they waited on events.

At that instant the roof caved in, releasing a deluge of mud into the thick blackness of the room. Lundius kicked out a window and, with Blythe and Clara, escaped into a freezing night filled with the thunder of the eruption and the splatter of falling clay.

After searching in vain for the others, the trio struggled through an uprooted orchard and, unable to reach the main settlement, spent the rest of the night sheltering as best they could in a hen-house.

Back in the building, the schoolmaster was dead; so, too, was his nephew. Amelia was alive but pinned by a fallen beam. With two of her children, Adolphus 10 and Edna 6 , by her side, she cradled her youngest, Mona, who was slowly suffocating under the weight of the timber. The grief Amelia must have endured in that dark hell is unimaginable, though her courage in the face of utter helplessness is heartbreakingly clear from her later unadorned account:. Meanwhile, at her whare, Guide Sophia was surrounded by refugees, packed tightly into the small house for shelter.

She counted 62 in all, Maori and Pakeha alike, pressed together beneath the sagging raupo roof, which her husband, Taiawhio, and others had braced with wooden props. Amid broken window glass and in darkness, people uttered prayers and tried to comfort children. With rugs and blankets over their heads as protection against the pelting mud, they had struggled through an icy gale to reach the building.

When McRae discovered that some of his group were unaccounted for, he went out into the ferocious night once more to find them. He carried to the whare his injured cook, then helped several others who had been forced back to the hotel. Not content with that, the indefatigable helper went out again, groping about by the light of a burning whare and calling for missing people. Stopping briefly at the home of Tuhourangi chief Wi Kepa Te Rangipuawhe, which was full of sheltering Maori, he fetched up at Hinemihi, along with fellow hotelier Charles Humphreys and his wife.

When, at about 6. In the early pre-dawn it seemed as though everything had been covered by a metre or two of slate-coloured snow. Here and there the ridges of whare roofs and the stripped branches of trees jutted through a thick blanket of mud. Fence lines, little more than pegs poking up through the ground, were easily stepped over. The Rotomahana Hotel had been reduced to a single twisted clapboard facade, shorn of its roof and verandahs, its rooms so much rubble.

The old mission church on the hill had been levelled. The shells of other buildings burned and smouldered. As the daylight strengthened, the shocked and dazed villagers who had survived the night, in ones and twos and in ragged groups, picked their way over the now unfamiliar ground, abandoned their dead and what was left of their homes, and in the eerie silence began the long walk to Rotorua. McRae and Bird took up the search once more for Bainbridge and the missing Haszards, but without spades were forced to abandon the attempt.

These the men freed before following the solemn exodus out of the valley. On a crisp winter morning years after the cataclysm, I retrace by car the route taken by the grim relief parties from Ohinemutu.

Leaving State Highway 30 just out of Rotorua, I turn to follow a smooth sealed road along the fringe of Whakarewarewa State Forest Park and past the scenic Blue and Green Lakes whose surfaces were turned grey by the eruption toward Te Wairoa. Nothing remains of the celebrated Tikitapu bush which enchanted early tourists.

Refugees from Te Wairoa struggled here through sticky volcanic mud in a wasteland of smashed timber. Big trees, uprooted by the tornado of air sucked in by the eruption, lay broken on the ground, some charred and smoking from lightning strikes.

The devastation was widespread. Fall-out from the six-hour upheaval had blanketed some 15, square kilometres of countryside, blinding cattle and sheep and burying pasture.

Cows, horses and bullocks went hungry. Insects were no more. Rats and mice, driven into the open by lack of food, were to be seen everywhere. All had been wiped from the face of the earth in a single night of fire. Te Wairoa itself now has a new name: the Buried Village. People watching took refuge in the houses and whare of Te Wairoa. The ground kept shaking, and a hail of ash and hot mud struck the village. Some houses, with their inhabitants still inside, were buried.

Other houses were left empty as their owners fled the village. More than 60 people sheltered there during the night. The other building was the runanga or meeting house. At the Rotomahana Hotel, the inhabitants had to first leave one room when the roof collapsed under the hail of ash, rocks and mud, and then the entire hotel. The schoolteacher and five of his family were buried under tons of mud and ash. Others in the house managed to escape and sheltered for the rest of the night in a chicken house.

About 6am the flood of ash and mud from the sky eased, but it remained dark for another two hours. When survivors came out of the shelter, they found that the village of Te Wairoa had been buried under a sea of mud. As the survivors were making their way to Rotorua 16 kilometres away, they were met by a rescue party.

The male survivors turned back with this party to Te Wairoa, while the women and children kept on to Rotorua. For some days the rescuers dug through the mud and ash. A rescue party also headed across the lake to check the other settlements. They found the villages of Te Ariki and Moura both buried completely under the volcanic mud. There were no survivors.

Lake Rotomahana had disappeared, leaving a valley of craters, steaming holes and pools of hot mud. The Pink and White Terraces had been completely destroyed, broken or buried under tons of lava. First published: 8 June Updated: 12 November URL: www. Hamel, Bruno L. Kinder, John, , photographer. Valentine, George Dobson, , photographer. We have more objects related to this topic.

View them all. Join the discussion about this article by posting your response on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram using the hashtag amdiscuss. Help us do more. Te Wairoa. Te Tarata Hamel, Bruno L. General view. Discuss this topic Join the discussion about this article by posting your response on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram using the hashtag amdiscuss. Before 10 June , this area was a tourism boom town of New Zealand.

Today y ou can scree to its crater! The scree run to the centre of the crater is awesome fun! People still come in droves to this region, chasing views of a steaming and venting earth. Some lucky ones make it to the top of Tarawera — the mountain that has defined what the land here looks like today. To truly soak in the history, take the bumpy ride to Mount Tarawera there is no sugar coating the road that leads up to the mountain top , walk to views and colours that are stunning all the way to the summit, and then — the best part — charge into the volcano a scree run.

You need permission to even be here, and luckily for you Kaitiaki Adventures not just gets you the permission, but also takes you up there on an incredible guided tour. Check out our Mount Tarawera Crater Walk half day experience. In the hongi, the breath of life is exchanged in a symbolic show of unity.

Through the exchange of this greeting, one is no longer considered manuhiri, a visitor, but rather tangata whenua, one of the people of the land. Diving head first down the waterfall. Sep