Terraces to be re-created

Press, 6 October 1988, Page 17

Terraces to be re-created

PA Hamilton Re-creation of the historic Pink and White Terraces in central North Island looks likely.

A Wairakei Tourist Park advisory committee, set up to promote tourism in the area, plans to advertise for interested developers probably within the next month, and almost certainly before Christmas.

The committee secretary, Mr Terry Slee, speaking from the Tourist and Publicity Department in Wellington, said a special committee meeting would be held next week to discuss the advertisement. Would-be developers

would need to demonstrate how they planned to develop tourist attractions around the re-created terraces, as long as they took responsibility for building the replica, he said. The original Pink and White Terraces were situated on the edge of Lake Rotomahana, south of Rotorua. They were a world-wide tourist attraction until destroyed in the 1886 Tarawera eruption. One hundred years later, Government scientists began seriously studying ways of re-creating them and sought samples of the original material from the public. The White Terraces

were considered to have obtained their colour from silica deposits, and the Pink Terraces by some other substance. A model was built at Wairakei, using water from the geothermal field there. The committee chairman, Mr Ted Fraser, also from the Tourist and Publicity Department, said the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research was confident it could reproduce the terraces’ distinctive colours, but that information was confidential. Wairakei Tourist Park covers 1300 ha, roughly centered on the Tourist Hotel Corporation hotel at Wairakei.