Te Wairoa, also known as The
Buried Village is located close to the shore of Lake Tarawera in New
Zealand's North Island. It was a Māori and European settlement where
visitors would stay on their way to visit the Pink and White Terraces. The
village was destroyed by the eruption of the volcano Mount Tarawera on June
10, 1886. Over 150 people died in the eruption, many of them in other
villages closer to the volcano.
The Buried Village today is open to the public and shows the excavated ruins
of the village, recovered relics on display in a world-class museum and the
history of the eruption. It is located 14 kilometres southeast of Rotorua on
Tarawera Road.
The 1886 eruption of Mt Tarawera
Volcanic craterShortly after
midnight on the morning of June 10, 1886 a series of more than 30
increasingly strong earthquakes were felt in the Rotorua area and an unusual
sheet lightning display was observed from the direction of Tarawera. At
around 2:00 am[1] a larger earthquake was felt and followed by the sound of
an explosion. By 2:30 am Mount Tarawera's three peaks had erupted, blasting
three distinct columns of smoke and ash thousands of metres into the sky. At
around 3.30 the largest phase of the eruption commenced with a large
quantity of ejecta from Rotomahana, in the form of a pyroclastic surge
obliterating the Pink and White Terraces and several villages within a 6
kilometre radius.
The eruption was heard clearly as far away as Blenheim and the effects of
the ash in the air were observed as far south as Christchurch, over 800 km
south. In Auckland the sound of the eruption and the flashing sky was
thought by some to be an attack by Russian warships.
The eruption killed 153 people. The eruption also destroyed the world famous
Pink and White Terraces and buried many Māori villages, including Te Wairoa.
Approximately 2 cubic kilometres of tephra was erupted, more than Mount St.
Helens ejected in 1980. Many of the lakes surrounding the mountain had their
shapes and areas dramatically altered, especially the eventual enlargement
of Lake Rotomahana, the largest crater involved in the eruption, as it
re-filled with water. The rift created during the eruption extends 17 km
across the mountain, Lake Rotomahana and through the Waimangu Volcanic Rift
Valley.
The phantom canoe
One pervasive legend of the 1886
eruption is that of the phantom canoe. Nine days before the eruption, a boat
full of tourists returning from the Terraces saw what appeared to be a war
canoe approach their boat, only to disappear in the mist half a mile from
them. One of the witnesses was a clergyman. Nobody around the lake owned
such a war canoe.
Though skeptics maintained that it was a freak reflection seen on the mist,
tribal elders at Te Wairoa claimed that it was a waka wairua (spirit canoe)
and was a portent of doom.
It has been suggested that the waka was actually a freak wave on the water,
caused by seismic activity below the lake, but locals believe that a future
eruption will be signalled by the reappearance of the canoe.
Source: Wikipedia - Okataina Eruptive History at the Global
Vulcanism Program website
