Tarawera Falls

The Tarawera River drains beautiful Lake Tarawera. It carries lovely, clear water, which soon vanishes into the cracks of a lava flow. The lava flow ends with high cliffs. The waterfall surges from the lava caves, directly out of the cliff face.

The large component, shaped like an inverted V, drops 60 meters all the time. Other smaller streams cascade from additional caves, especially to the left.

The pretty high fall is only seen after heavy rain. Water fills the lower caves and is forced higher, to emerge as the vertical waterfall to the left, springing from a narrow V shaped valley.

The water then cascades over the rocky shelf to the rapids, cascading over huge rocks which previously fell from the cliff face.

Behind the top of the falls there is a wild surge chamber where the water swirls and gurgles down into the lava cave.

The Tarawera river continues as an idyllic stream through the commercial pine forests, until it reaches the saw mill at Kawerau. There it becomes sadly polluted and continues as a black, ugly, drain to the sea. The local Maori are very upset about the death of "their" river, which was once a plentiful source of fresh water fish. The Tasman Pulp and Paper Company assert it is not the Maori's river, nor anybody else's and they have all the legal papers to prove they are fully entitled to load it with chemicals. As they are New Zealand's largest exporter of manufactured goods, nobody who actually has any influence is prepared to argue with them, (nor with the Caxton Paper Mill near by, which makes toilet paper).