The Mount Tarawera eruption was New Zealand’s most violent and destructive volcanic eruption in recent history. Mount Tarawera is 30 kilometres from Rotorua amidst the North Island’s volcanic– thermal region. This eruption caused approximately 153 deaths, 147 of whom were Maoris.


Prior to the eruption, streams around Mount Tarawera had abruptly started gushing and then drying. However much more troubling to the Maoris living near Mount Tarawera, were the events that occurred on 31st May, 1886. While guide Sophia Hinerangi and her boat of tourists were returning from visiting the Pink and White Terraces, a spectral war canoe had appeared. The warrior paddlers were seen to be wearing ominous symbols on their head. The canoe then quickly dis-appeared. This and other signs indicated that something cataclysmic was about to happen.


The aged tohunga (Maori priest) Tuhoto warned his people in the village, Te Wairoa, that because of the departure of the ancestral ways, punishment would be sent by the atua (the god) Tamaohoi who lived, buried deep within the mountain.


At 3 am, 10th June 1886, the supposedly extinct volcano, Mount Tarawera expoded. The three domes on this now flat-topped volcano blew and demolished one side of the mountain. Over the next six hours several eruptions occurred and a 17 kilometre wound of craters and deep, elongated pits was created. The eruption ripped away the bed of the nearby Lake Rotomahana burying Te Wairoa and other nearby villages with mud, rock and ash. The explosion deposited ash and debris over an area of 16 000 km2 and the town of Rotorua was evacuted. The famed Pink and White Terraces, a giant fanlike silica formation which glittered in pink, white and turquoise as water ran down the terraces into Lake Rotomahana below, were shattered into splinters and totally disappeared from the face of the Earth. Eruptions eased after the next three months.


The village of Te Wairoa being 15 kilometres away from Mount Tarawera was covered with mud up 2.5 metres deep. The villages of Te Arika and Moura, both at the base of Mount Tarawera, were completely submerged in mud. When the searchers arrived in Te Wairoa, they partially uncover Tuhoto’s house, days later, they found the old man still alive, Tamahoi had protected his prophet.


Tuhoto was taken to Rotorua and cared for by the pakeha (white man) where they insisted on cutting the 100 year old man’s matted hair. As the hair fell, Tuhoto’s life left his body, and the great tohunga of Te Wairoa died.

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