Pink and White Terraces

The Pink and White Terraces 1840s-1886

The famed and unique terraces of Rotomahana were visited by many tourists, including royalty, lords and ladies, and artists and adventurers. Those visitors were the forerunners to today's tourists, who still come to experience the geothermal wonders of Rotorua.

The Terraces as they were

Centuries of thermal activity formed the terraces. The silica enriched water flowed from a geyser into the lake, over ferns and tea tree, cooling as it did, to form the famous pools. 
Many have written about them and many came to visit, after tourists to the “Hot Springs District” started to share their stories across the globe.

To experience the terraces, tourists had to traverse the countryside from Ōhinemutu to Lake Tarawera. This was a full day’s travel. By 1874, a road was being built from Tauranga to Rotomahana, allowing tour parties to drive within ten miles of the terraces.

In his book “Tarawera and the Terraces”, Philip Andrews refers to the Reverand Thomas Chapman, who was one of the first missionaries to the region. He writes:

Chapman was a probable European to first see the Pink and White Terraces as he arrived in the area ca.1835 where he founded his first mission station at Te Koutu. 

Early explorers that are recorded as arriving ca.1840 Ernst Dieffenbach who approached the area from the south with his companion, Symonds, were 'probably the first Europeans to set foot on the terraces'. (Andrews, (1986). Tarawera and the terraces. p.12)

In “Tarawera Eruption Centennial Exhibition 1886-1986”, Peter Waaka writes of the time 100 years before the eruption:

Tuhourangi under their chiefs Rangiheuea and Rangipuawhe held complete control over Tarawera and Rotomahana to the Pink and White Terraces. The young men of Tuhourangi were rostered on the whale boats used to ferry the tourist across Lake Tarawera.  From guiding fees alone, the tribe had an annual income of 6,000 pounds. 

From 1845 to 1870, an American missionary is recorded as living at Lake Tarawera: Reverand Seymour Mills Spencer. His family settled firstly at Te Rua a Umukaria. The reverend renamed it Galilee, but locals called it Kariri.

The Spencer's took in many travellers who arrived to visit the terraces, as there were no other accommodation options, until the first hotel was built in ca.1875. This was the Cascade Hotel, which later became known as the Rotomahana Hotel when Joseph McRae took over in 1881.  The next mission house built for the Spencer family was at Te Mu. After Reverand Spencer left, his house was used by Peter Fauregeraud, and his wife Mary of Te Mu, who moved in and charged visitors for the accommodation. (Andrews, 1986)

Many accounts were published in the newspapers of the day, as follows in this excerpt from the Whanganui Herald, and reprinted in the Bay of Plenty Times in 1874, where the writer describes the terraces:

The White Terrace:  The perfect evenness, the variety of sizes, the extent, the shades of colour of the water which fills each basin to the brim and gently overflows into the one below... the terraces grow upon the imagination.  The Pink Terrace: There is a greater number of larger basins than the White Terrace, the size being more uniform... the scene is transcendantly beautiful. (Bay of Plenty Times, 1874).

In another such account from the Australasian Sketcher on 7 February 1880, a Mr. W. Senior tells of the improvements Māori had made in the type of transportation they used to ferry tourists to and from the landing at Lake Tarawera: 

Two years ago a voyage across Lake Tarawera would have been performed in a very low type of canoe, a mere dugout, in which you were generally drenched and always cramped. Now we found a capital whaleboat ready for launching. 

He goes on to say, his first impression of Lake Rotomahana is that it is an insignificant and even dirty piece of water, and of the White Terraces:

...the sun shone upon the wonderful alabaster-like steps and upon the cascades pouring from them, and put a million diamonds into the small basins receiving the downfall" (Australasian Sketcher, 1880)

When Anthony Trollope visited the terraces in 1873, he stayed in a whare at the side of Lake Rotomahana. He describes his accommodation as being:

A little way from the terraces in the midst of various steam-jets, the party slept on hard ground, and the adjacent stream made the air hot and muggy, and I had a feeling as of many insects. 

Despite his uncomfortable accommodation, Trollope describes the water being three to four feet deep in basins and the terraces as being “smooth as alabaster only softer”. He goes on to describe the terraces and suggested that “the time probably will come in which there will be a sprightly hotel at Rotomahana, with a table d'hôtel, and boats at so much an hour, and regular seasons for bathing." (Press, 1873)

Anthony Trollope was correct in thinking a hotel would be built at Rotomahana, approval to build one was granted just one week before the eruption of Mount Tarawera. 

Eruption of Mt Tarawera.

The sound of the eruption was heard far and wide, but few realised the magnitude of the disaster. Don Stafford writes:

...speculations of what it was were published in the New Zealand Herald describing 'continuous firing, the loudness of the reports, and the fact that there were occasional salvos of guns' let them to consider an attack from the man-o-war Russian cruiser Vestnik which was rumoured to be coming up the west coast. (Stafford, 1986)

A true report of what occurred was telegraphed by Rotorua's Postmaster Roger Dansey during the eruption. One telegram sent by him gives a vivid description, he wrote:

We have all passed a fearful night here. The earth has been in continual quake since midnight. At 2.10am there was a heavy quake, then a fearful roar, which made everyone run out of their houses, a grand yet terrible sight for those so near as we were presented itself. Mt Tarawera close to Rotomahana became suddenly an active volcano, belching out fire and lava to a great height.

As was to be reported by those living near the mountain, who survived to tell the tale of their ordeal, everything was covered in ash and mud, and sadly they were to discover 150 lives were lost. The Assistant Surveyor General, S. Percy Smith recorded the extent of the desolation and destruction of the landscape on his expedition to explore the terrace: “the whole aspect of the lake side leaves no hope that the terraces have escaped destruction”.

Now (2025)

Today, we are blessed to have many paintings and photographs which give us a glimpse of what we can never see with our own eyes.  Lake Rotomahana is very different to the earlier one, it offers a view of Mt Tarawera showing the craters and the hills around the lake belch steam and boiling hot water.  The Waimangu Volcanic Valley boasts the Inferno Crater, Frying Pan Lake and Cathedral Rocks giving visitors a glimpse of what once was. 

Post written by Alison. April 2025.

References:

Books:

Andrews, Philip (1986). Tarawera and the terraces. Wilson & Horton.

Rotorua District Council. (1986). Tarawera eruption centennial exhibition 1886-1986. Rotorua District Council.

Stafford, Donald M. (1986). The Founding years in Rotorua: a history of events to 1900. Ray Richards.

Articles:

Australasian Sketcher. (1880, February 7). Lake Rotomahana and the Pink Terraces. Australasian Sketcher. retrieved April 7, 2025 from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article60622512

Press. (1873, June 2). Mr. Trollope on New Zealand. Press.

Bay of Plenty Times. (1874, April 1). Rotomahana. Bay of Plenty Times.

New Zealand Graphic. (1901, August 24). Lake Rotomahana and Pink Terraces. New Zealand Graphic.

Smith, S. Percy (1886, June 10). Volcanic eruption at Tarawera. Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives. retrieved April 9, 2025 from https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/parliamentary/AJHR1886-I.2.3.3.37?query=smith+tarawera+eruption&snippet=true