PINK AND WHITE TERRACES.

Taranaki Daily News, 14 January 1922, Page 7

PINK AND WHITE TERRACES.

WILL BE SEEN AGAIN’ AN INTERESTING SUGGESTION. Wellington, Jan. 11. The question has been raised more than once whether the wonderful Pink and White Terraces were really destroy ed by the Tarawera eruption in 1886. Mr. Alfred Warbrick, the well-known Tourist Department guide, says emphatically they were not. He /holds that the terraces were submerged to a considerable depth by the flow of water into Rotomahana Lake at the time of the eruption, and that by lowering the level of the lake, which he says is easily practicable, the terraces would be revealed again. Mr. Warbrick, who was one of the first to reach the spot after the eruption, says that if the terraces were blown up, fragments of the silica of which they were composed would have been found. None were found.

As to how the level of the water in Rotomahana might be lowered, Mr. Warbrick says the matter is a simple one, and has been more than once discussed by engineers and authorities. At the present time Rotomahana lake is 148 feet higher than Tarawera. A sixfoot channel cut for half a mile is all that i'a necessary to connect the lakes. The water could be drawn off gradually. It would be carried off by the Tarawera river. If the cutting work were done by hand the cost would not exceed £5OOO. Steam scoops in the possession of the Public Works Department would cut a channel in a few days. In view of the great .value of the wonderful terraces to the Dominion as an attraction, the suggestion is made that the Government should undertake the work.