Visiting the Terraces
Traveling New Zealand in the 1880s.
New Zealand was part of the tourist boom that circled the globe from the 1870s. The advent of steamships greatly reduced the length of time it took to travel round the world and also made it enormously more comfortable. Assisted by Thomas Cook and Co tourists made their way in great numbers to Rotorua to visit the Pink and White terraces before the Tarawera eruption in 1886 which destroyed them. Many of them kept diaries which give a detailed portrait of what it was like to be a Victorian tourist. They sketched, took photographs and painted. Some of the most famous depictions of the terraces are by Charles Blomfield, two of which are displayed in ‘Settling the Land: Order out of Chaos?’. Lydia Wevers will discuss these travellers and what they saw, and talk about Victorian tourists and the problems they encountered in New Zealand in the 1870s and 80s.
