CHARLES SPENCER (1854-1933)
Mount Tarawera / Pink and White Terraces (1, 111m - 3,645ft)
New Zealand
In Pink Terraces- c.1900, black and white phototgraphs hand colored,
Museum of New Zealand / Te Papa Tongarewa
The volcano and the terraces
On 10 June 1886, Mount Tarawera (1, 111m - 3,645ft) erupted. The eruption spread from west of Wahanga dome, 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) to the north, down to Lake Rotomahana. The volcano belched out hot mud, red hot boulders, and immense clouds of black ash from a 17 kilometres (11 mi) rift that crossed the mountain, passed through the lake, and extended beyond into the Waimangu valley.
After the eruption, a crater over 100 metres (330 ft) in depth encompassed the former site of the terraces. After some years this filled with water to form a new Lake Rotomahana, 30–40 metres (98–131 ft) higher, ten times larger and deeper than the old lake. This explosive basaltic eruption killed an estimated 120 people.
Alfred Patchet Warbrick, a boat builder at Te Wairoa, witnessed the eruption of Mount Tarawera from Maunga Makatiti to the north of Lake Tarawera. Warbrick soon had whaleboats on Lake Tarawera investigating the new landscape; he in time became the chief guide to the post-eruption attractions. Warbrick never accepted that the Pink and White Terraces had been destroyed
The photographer
When Tarawera erupted only a few weeks later, Geological Survey director James Hector and assistant geologist James Park disembarked at Tauranga on 12 June, en route to the Rotorua lakes district to report on the disturbance. He immediately engaged Charles Spencer who was already a famous photograph in new Zealand, to accompany the party and record the effects of the eruption.
By the time Spencer returned to Tauranga a week later he had accumulated an initial set of plates which he developed and printed. He then returned to Te Wairoa on 8 July and took several more views during a brief spell of decent weather. At the end of the month he made a third visit, accompanying Percy Smith’s surveying party for almost a week, and taking a number of views between the Ruawahia Dome on Tarawera and the craters to the south-west near Rotomahana.
Although no definitive lists exist, it is likely that Spencer produced several dozen views of the Rotorua hot lakes district before and after the eruption, and as a result his are some of the better known images, in collections throughout the world.
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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau
