WHITE ISLAND SALUTE

Opotiki News, Volume X, Issue 1049, 25 November 1947, Page 2

WHITE ISLAND SALUTE

PERFECT ,WEEK-END—-WEATHER (Contributed.) Yes—a perfect week-end after a lost week-end. Left here Sunday morning and returned Monday night. Flat sea over, lovely weather, warm sunshine, plenty of fish and birds and a good trip home. I had hear wonderful tales of White -Island. “You can hear it'two miios away. You can’t hear yourself speak. The place smells horribly. Clouds of hot dust, stones and ash roll down. The cliffs go right round the island. There are no landing places. There is no bush.” “What year was that ?” I ask. Monday, 17th. November, 1917, and I’ve only just discovered the hermit fisherman’s paradise and mine. A place where lilies and the wild thyme would grow if those weeds were taken over. A place where there arc acres of forest, gannet rookcris and shoals of fish. Where there arc houses with electric lights doors, verandahs, sixinch match-lined walls, now of course grown over by bush and halfrotten. A bake-house with ovens and concrete floors. Store sheds, landing places. A large factory and an adjacent shed with equipment stored. Remains of a road and a track;. Remains of man. The Crater One can hardly smell the island; one can’t hear the place until you are up on the crater rim looking into the mess. And what a pretty mess. Sands of every known colour with the sun shining on them—blue, red, pink, violet, yellow, purple, grey, white, black etc. The crater is like a saucer, on the floor of which there -arc vents, holes and fissures. The crater floor is down at sea level at the S.E. end (at the extreme right facing from Opotiki) and it slopes up to 50 feet above sea level at the N.W. end (left side of crater facing from Opotiki). Looking down from the rim summit you can see two mud lakes, knee deep and a chain and a-half wide. Between these two lakes there is the coloured sand dune and a long cent which moans and bubbles below. A chain away there is a round hole twenty feet across which boils at the top.. Around these of course are the cracks and fissures which puff cut steam (about 30 in number). There is only one hole from which smoke trails in wisps, presumably a carbonated gas. The The clouds of steam come from these vents and fissures and trail upwards. By the time they reach the crater ‘rinl they merge together and the wind takes them away giving one the illusion that the vapour comes from one dirty big hole. The floor of the crater is roughly 20 acres in extent. There is a rent down at the right end facing from Opotiki, down where the factory stands. Warm mineral (mainly sulphur) water sops underground into the sea and is carried around to N. E. Ly the current. From the run one could see a panoramic view from the Mount to the Cape. To seaward there are terrific cliffs which drop into 200 feel of water. Undoubtedly the work of roaring northerlies which have and are eroding the place. But the cliffs are majestic. The outcrops of rock are pretty and provide nesting grounds for gulls, shearwater and gannet. Approaching White Island from Opotiki there- are three rock outcrops about 20 feet high and over to N.W. (seaward) there are also another three. There is an abundance of marine life. Plenty of fish too, kingfisli and hapuka, mako and conger. Wait till you hear the sailor’s yarn of 2000 birds.