The Waimangu Geyser, located near

Rotorua Rotorua () is a city in the Bay of Plenty region of New Zealand's North Island. It is sited on the southern shores of Lake Rotorua, from which it takes its name. It is the seat of the Rotorua Lakes District, a territorial authorities of New Zea ...

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, was for a time the most powerful

geyser A geyser (, ) is a spring with an intermittent water discharge ejected turbulently and accompanied by steam. The formation of geysers is fairly rare and is caused by particular hydrogeological conditions that exist only in a few places on Ea ...

in the world. The geyser was seen erupting in late 1900. Its eruptions were observed reaching up to in height, and it excited worldwide interest. Day trip visitors from

were keen to see the geyser erupting regularly for 5–6 hours out of a cycle of about 36 hours, and a tourist trip called the "Round Trip" ran from the summer of 1902/1903.Information panel "Waimangu Geyser 1900–1904" at geyser site The geyser was the catalyst for tourism to the Waimangu Valley. Its workings were apparently created by the great 1886 Mount Tarawera eruption. The water expelled by the geyser was black with rocks and mud from the surrounding terrain, so the indigenous

Māori people Māori () are the Indigenous peoples of Oceania, indigenous Polynesians, Polynesian people of mainland New Zealand. Māori originated with settlers from East Polynesia, who arrived in New Zealand in several waves of Māori migration canoes, c ...

named the geyser Waimangu, meaning 'Black Waters'. The geyser gave its name to the surrounding geothermal region, the

Waimangu Volcanic Rift Valley The Waimangu Volcanic Rift Valley is the hydrothermal system created on 10 June 1886 by the volcanic eruption of Mount Tarawera, on the North Island of New Zealand. It encompasses Lake Rotomahana, the site of the Pink and White Terraces, as wel ...

. Joseph Perry of the Limelight Department of the

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filmed the Waimangu Geyser in action. In August 1903, tourist guide Alfred Warbrick measured the depth of the geyser lake at only when he launched a rowboat on the lake as a result of a dare. The lake's shallow depth was attributed to much of the ejected solid material falling back into the vent each time. On 30 August 1903, New Zealand rugby international Joe Warbrick, David McNaughton, and sisters Ruby and Catherine Nicholls were killed after venturing close to the edge of the geyser, having ignored requests from Warbrick's brother Alfred to return to a safe distance. The four were scalded and then swept away in a sudden violent eruption. In mid-1904, the geyser became dormant for several weeks and subsequent eruptions were shorter and weaker until they stopped on 1 November 1904. This coincided with a

landslide Landslides, also known as landslips, rockslips or rockslides, are several forms of mass wasting that may include a wide range of ground movements, such as rockfalls, mudflows, shallow or deep-seated slope failures and debris flows. Landslides ...

that changed the

water table The water table is the upper surface of the phreatic zone or zone of saturation. The zone of saturation is where the pores and fractures of the ground are saturated with groundwater, which may be fresh, saline, or brackish, depending on the loc ...

of Lake Tarawera by several metres. While it was hypothesized that this was the cause for the extinction of the geyser, later studies found no apparent physical connection between these two events. The geyser became extinct in 1908. Afterwards, hydrothermal activity in the nearby Echo Crater increased, leading to eruptions in the crater in 1915, 1917, and 1924.

Notes

References

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External links

Historical photos of Waimangu Geyser

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Waimangu geyser: the world’s largest
'Hot springs, mud pools and geysers', Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Updated 5 November 2007.
Images of the Waimangu Geyser
from the Alexander Turnbull Library's Unpublished Collections Rotorua Geysers of New Zealand Okataina Volcanic Centre Landforms of the Bay of Plenty Region