HOT POOLS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 650, 30 September 1933, Page 6

HOT POOLS

OUTSIDERS VIEW OF THERMAL DISTRICT ASPECT. "KEEP OUT." A recent news it-em from Rotorua seems to suggest to -me that a ditty with a similar lilt could be written ab'out a sight that travellers caiinot duplicate outside NewlfcZealand, and that is the.Maori infantry which' kicks up its heels and sucks its toes on the edge of the hot cooking- springs ahd young and old geysers in the Rotorua country. Considering the f-amiliar ■terms on which the Arawa population lives with hoili-ng water, it is am-azing that so few aecidents occurs, writes Taniwai in the New Zealand Railways Magazine. Th'e Coroner, holding an inquest on a three-year-old which had tumbled into a hot pool at Ngapuna, near Rotorua, commented strongly on the danger of unfenced springs of boiling water. Certainly such places should be made less perilous. There are several ways. In one furiously hoiling- ngawha at Ohinemutu some Maori humorist, a f-ew years ago, set up a post bearing the notic-e: "Keiep Out!" In such a pl-ace at Tarewa village, a kind of n-ative suburb of Rotorua, the large' hoiling springs, originally geysers, are filled nearly to the brink; the water is all but level with the. grassy lawn a'round. They go down to unknown depths; the quietly hoiling water, perf-ectly clear, has a blue* ish tint. The mothers of the village tend their cooking there, and gossip while the inf-ants — there are always a lot at Tarewa, happily — lie on shawls or mats or crawl about in the manner of all the world's children, but with this difference, that there is sudden and fearful death within a few feet of them. The babies on the Tarewa block have the "keep out" instinct. The sight 'doesn't disturb the lovely cairn of the kainga M-aori. It would send a pakeha moither into fifc with fright.