On our most active volcano
I’ve long wanted to visit White Island. Just something about it being our only offshore island volcano, and this country’s most active volcano at that. Approaching by boat on the 49km crossing from Whakatane gives time for anticipation to build. Already handed out to us are our hard hats and gas masks, standard issue for anyone visiting this island.
We transfer to an inflatable which takes us over the last bit of seawater tinged green by chemicals leaching from the volcano. At the remains of a concrete jetty we all scramble ashore. Two things immediately hit me; firstly the acrid smell, nothing like the pungent rotten egg smell of Rotorua, but more acidic, and secondly, the hissing roar of the Main Crater Complex some 700m up ahead.
Our guide keeps telling us how important it is to keep all together, keep your hard hats on, and stick to the compacted ash paths; ‘‘All these bulging hot spots around here are not safe to stand by, you can fall through into the embers and severely burn your legs.’’
Ash and volcanic eruptions have long been recorded on White Island, but it wasn’t until 1967 that a scientific monitoring program was set up. Our arrival coincides with that of a helicopter carrying four volcanologists from GNS in Rotorua. Two of them suit up and set about taking chemical composition samples and measuring the temperature at Fumarole Zero, one of the steaming sulphur vents on the side of the crater.
White Island is the most northerly volcano in the Taupo Volcanic Zone, while Mt Ruapehu is the major southern vent, so any changes in both these active volcanoes can be part of the bigger alert picture. We leave them to it and walk up a compacted pavement of ash to finally gaze into the Main Crater Complex, created from the 1976 eruption. The colour of the steaming crater lake, some 70m below sea level, can be milky white to vibrant hues of green and blue. Today it’s a pale green
Underfoot the ground trembles and the huge vents before us billow out massive steamy clouds of white, grey and yellow gases. I have read lots about volcanoes, but immense upwelling of screaming hot energy simply eclipsed all my expectations.
White Island’s reputation is that of a grumpy volcano, and things can change quickly. Ash blowouts are common, the last just a few weeks ago, but the last real eruption here was on 27 July, 2000. Proceeding it for weeks had been a big fallout of wet ash and scoria which covered the island in a layer 200mm thick. Then the lake disappeared and a new crater 150m across exploded into existence. This was followed by a fallout of red ash which turned the island a rusty colour.
The worse calamity on the Island occurred around 14 September 1914 when the entire south-western rim of the crater collapsed, causing a lahar to sweep down the crater floor and engulf ten sulphur miners sleeping in their huts, along with the boilerhouse, retort house, cookhouse/dining room and manager’s quarters. It was several days before anyone on the mainland realised anything was amiss. Rescue parties dug trenches through the hot, steaming debris but no sign could be found of the men or their huts.
The Auckland Sulphur Company, which employed the men, had recruited them on three month renewable contracts, attracting them with the slogan; ‘Work on a South Seas Island’. Not all were fooled, one man tied himself to the mast of the boat which had taken him out and refused to get off. To him that workplace he had signed up to was a vision of hell.
Thermal streams, bubbling pits of mud, bright yellow sulphur chimneys, we inspect all manner of volcanic wonders, occasionally having to slip on our gas masks as outpouring of invisible hydrogen sulphide gas jab the back of our throats. Our last half an hour is spent back near Crater Bay, inspecting what remains of the heavily corroding sulphur works which got rebuilt on top of lahar debris around 1925.
This time around though, the men’s accommodation huts would be more safely located around the corner in what is now known as Bungalow Bay.
The island was put up for public tender and eventually bought in June 1936 by Auckland stockbroker George Raymond Buttle. At the time he said he quite liked the idea of owning a volcano, adding ‘Strange as it may seem, the island is unbelievably beautiful and beyond description. Surely it is one of the wonders of the world!’
It remains the only privately owned actively volcanic island in the world. Several helicopter companies fly out tourists, but White Island Tours in Whakatane has the only concession today from the trust owners to take tourists out to the island by boat. This tour company, owned by Peter and Jenny Tait, are in effect the ‘official guardians’ of this amazing place.
Motoring away, we take a final look at the two gannet colonies which nest above the luxuriant emerald green swathes of ice plants, most successful of the 13 plant species of plants which manage to survive on the island.
On the way back to Whakatane, I cannot get out of my head the horrible death those 10 sulphur miners would have had back in 1914. Two days earlier, on 12 September 1914, the terrible news of 40 men perishing in the Huntly Mine Disaster had made huge headlines around the country. Combined with disheartening early war news from Europe, it was perhaps a question of how much grieving could a nation take?
Sad I cannot help think though that no real memorial exists for those suphur miners. Nothing would last in White Island’s acidic atmosphere anyway I guess. But they should never be forgotten. Their names, recorded as missing, did eventually get printed in an Auckland newspaper. They were… A.J.C. McKinn (manager) R. Walker Stephen H. Young J. Byron J.W. Donovan R. Lamb H. Williams A. Anderson R. Waring Mr Kelly All but J. Byron were single men. There would have been 11, but the lucky cook slept in and had missed the boat out for his shift. RIP those 10 who lost their lives so cruelly here, a brutal but awe-inspiring landscape.