This is The Detail's Long Read - one in-depth story read by us every weekend.
JC Hoyte's painting of the Pink and White Terraces in the 1870s. Photo: White Fungus/Hocken collection
This week, it's Strange Days on Lake Rotomahana, written by Tim Bollinger and published in White Fungus, a kiwi-run, Taiwan-based arts magazine.
It's an account of the violent end of the Pink and White Terraces, once New Zealand’s very own wonder of the world, now scrubbed from the face of the earth.
You can read the full article here.
Famed for their rare romantic beauty, the Pink and White Terraces of Lake Rotomahana were promoted to 19th-century travelers as the "8th Wonder of the World" in the earliest days of New Zealand tourism. Overdressed in their Victorian finery, a parade of wealthy foreign visitors arrived by schooner, stagecoach, whaleboat, and canoe to visit these naturally formed terraced pools in the heart of the North Island's Hot Lakes District. Their vivid descriptions, a handful of paintings, and a shoebox of photographic postcards are now all that remain of this geological wonder, lost to the world forever in a single night of violent volcanic destruction.
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