Rotomahana after the eruption

Painted by Charles Blomfield from the sketches made in the area four months after the Mt Tarawera eruption in June 1886, this scene depicts the steaming remains of Rotomahana. During the eruption it became the site of a vast hydrothermal blast, responsible for the thick mud that buried the surrounding countryside.

Blomfield wrote of it, “The sight was very grand and awful. What must it have been when the geysers were playing up mud and stones hundreds of feet high.” (Picturing History, 2009)

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