Leads on what made Pink Terraces pink

Press, 21 February 1986, Page 9

Leads on what made Pink Terraces pink

PA Wellington The D.S.I.R. has “promising leads” in the search for the elusive chemical that gave the historic Pink Terraces at Tarawera their colour.

The director of the Chemical Division, Dr Gordon Leary, said that of 30 samples sent to him, he thought only two were genuine. Of the two, there were two or three choices of colour that had to be checked so that the match was made as exactly as possible. The D.S.I.R. wants to reconstruct the Pink and White Terraces that were destroyed in the Mount Tarawera eruption of 1886, both as a tourist attraction and because of “New Zealand pride and

interest.” Dr teary said he would be keen to see a few more samples to compare with the ones he already had before making a final decision. Many of the samples submitted were family heirlooms, some with attached dowry notes and letters from parents and grandparents who lived in the Rotorua area at the time of the eruption, he said. Once the decision is made, probably in two months, the next question is where to site new terraces. The D.S.I.R. and the, Lands and Surveys Department were keen to make them at Wairakei, he said. The two groups were forming a working

party on the matter and a decision was expected later in the year. “Wairakei is a good spot because it has an abundant supply of water going begging,” Dr Leary said. The terraces are likely to be sited on a hillside where a stream trickles to help form the necessary basis of silica. "Once we have helped to form the base, we let nature do the rest,” he said. Although the D.S.I.R. has not been looking for the original terraces, Dr Leary knows of groups interested in finding them. One group has shown him a 1902 survey map which points to the terraces being burled under Lake Rotomahana.