Fumes and Fears

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 304, 15 March 1928, Page 10

Fumes and Fears

THE VOLCANO BOGEY

New Zealand’s Equanimity

AN English lady who had been visiting New Zealand stated the other day, before her departure on the Niagara, that she was glad to be leaving a country where there was still so much evidence of volcanic activi y. She was much perturbed about the restlessness of Ngauruhoe, and was puzzled aboiit the equanmu . which New Zealanders regarded this threatening p non.

TJOSSIBLY New Zealanders over- -*■ look the fact that this is one of the few countries in which volcanic phenomena can be observed at close quarters, and that to most visitors these manifestations must be strange, and perhaps disquieting. Furthermore New Zealanders are educated by association and experience to regard Ngauruhoe more as a friend than an enemy. The volcano has never yet done serious harm, and the settlers living within twenty miles or so pay little heed to its outbursts,

except to appreciate their spectacular phases. For it is nothing new, even in pakeha history, for Ngauruhoe to be angry. It has always been a “violent, smoking, mountain,” sacred to the Maoris, mysterious to the white man. Up its slopes was borne, in 1846, the body of the great monarch, Te Heu Heu, overwhelmed, with fifty of his people, in a landslide that destroyed his village, Te Rapa, by the shore of Lake Taupo. But wrathful Ngauruhoe shot a salvo to the skies as the burial party was climbing to its crest, so the cortege reached a hasty but unanimous decision that the lee of a big rock would do for Te Heu Heu, and that discretion was thereupon the better part of valour. SPASMODIC SALLIES After that a stringent “tapu” helped to conserve the mountain’s air of sin-

ister mystery. It continued to demonstrate noisily at intervals, and in 1855 the western wall of its crater collapsed; this change occurring at the same time as the Wellington earthquake, which raised the Cook s Strait coast by five feet, and converted the basin reserve (a dock site) into a cricket ground. Hochstetter (1559) notes that there was report of "a fiery shrine visible over the mountain.” Something similar ba3 been reported in recent messages, so it is apparent that the latest developments are nothing new. By geologists they are dismissed with casual references to “minor eruptions of fragmentary material,” and it is further mentioned that these manifestations, along with the pronounced thermal activity on the line from Tol kaanu to White Island, are generally regarded as a sign of dying vulcanism. Occasionally the hidden forces become mischievous. Their worst recorded effort, in ISB6, blew half Tarawera over the adjacent landscape, and took toll of more than 100 Maori lives. There was another thermal disaster, believed to have been caused primarily by a landslide, when a steam crater exploded at White Island in September, 1914. Eleven men, employees of the company working the deposits, were never seen again. Their camp was completely wiped out. Still another tragedy occurred in April, 1917, when the wife and child of the caretaker lost their lives in the eruption of Frying Pan Flat, Waimangu Geyser, Rotorua. There are scientists who consider that Waimangu, of all New Zealand’s volcanic features, is the only one with a sinister flavour. It has a bad record. SIXTY-THREE VOLCANOES Meanwhile, Auckland and its suburbs sit serenely upon the sixtythree eruptive vents which were catalogued by the industrious Dr. Hochstetter seventy years ago. Those who number Auckland’s dead volcanoes on the fingers of the hands, including only the conspicuous eminences of North Shore and the isthmus, would be surprised at the -magnitude of Hochstetter’s list. He included, of course, the Orakei Basin, Onehunga Basin, and Lake Pupuke, attributing these to submarine outbursts; he also noted many out-of-the-way craters round Panmure, Otahuhu and the Manukau Harbour; and he decided that Waterloo Quadrant and the lower end of Princes Street were formed, roughly, on the buried rim of an ancient crater. Hochstetter visited North Shore when it was a very outlying spot indeed, and he considered North Head, a secondary volcanic structure, to be the most interesting of all the Auckland hills. It was fortunate that he inspected it when he did. To-day he could not do so without a military permit, and as a foreigner might be regarded with suspicion.