Lost 1859 Survey Solves 130 Year Old Mystery

Lost 1859 Survey Leads Searchers to Pink and White Terraces Locations: Solves 130 Year Old Mystery

Building on GNS Science research at Lake Rotomahana with a lost 1859 lake survey, researcher and author Rex Bunn pinpoints the Pink and White Terrace locations. The research breakthrough came with the discovery in Basel, Switzerland of the 1859 survey by Dr von Hochstetter, the German-Austrian geologist. This unknown survey recently returned to New Zealand with author Dr Nolden and was compiled by Rex Bunn.

It finally fixes the Pink and White Terrace locations, with the Te Otukapuarangi (Pink Terrace) spring location plotted at Google Maps™ coordinates ~-38.2617910, 176.4205480. This location lies in a clearing seventy meters from shore. The Te Tarata (White Terrace) spring location is also plotted along the shoreline of Lake Rotomahana.

Up to now and without evidence, the Pink and White Terraces were assumed destroyed in the 1886 Mt Tarawera eruption. In 2011 a GNS Science team under Dr Cornel de Ronde found a remnant of the Pink Terrace, deep under the lake. Using the unique, pre-eruption Hochstetter Survey, Bunn validates de Ronde’s finding and explains how that fragment came to rest sixty-meters down in the crater lake. It was undermined and fractured off the main Pink Terrace during the 1886 eruption and slid down into the volcano crater. The main section of the Pink Terrace appears to lie on land, buried under volcanic ash from the eruption. The White Terrace also appears to be on land and deeply buried under ash.

These findings and the Hochstetter Survey are first documented in Rex Bunn’s new book…Quest for the Pink and White Terraces: The Expedition to Recover New Zealand's Eighth Wonder of the World. The volume publishes this week and is first available as a Kindle ebook at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EUIBI4E

More information on the background to this discovery is at http://amazon.com/author/rexbunn and https://bunnbreather.wordpress.com/

ENDS

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