Humphreys' Boarding House, Te Wairoa, after eruption, June 10 1886

At around 2am on 10 June 1886, tourists staying at the Terrace Hotel (also known as Humphreys’ Boarding House) in Te Wairoa went outside to watch the spectacle of Mount Tarawera erupting. As ash, mud and red-hot scoria began raining down, they took shelter in Joseph McRae’s Rotomahana Hotel. All within thought their last hours had come. Twenty-one-year-old Edwin Bainbridge hastily wrote: ‘This is the most awful moment of my life. I cannot tell when I may be called upon to meet my God. I am thankful that I find his strength sufficient for me. We are under the heavy falls of volcano …’ Here he was interrupted by part of the building caving in, and was later found crushed by a fallen balcony. Others who sheltered in the hotel survived, as did those who took refuge in guide Sophia Hinerangi’s whare. But many Māori living in less robust dwellings around the shores of Lake Tarawera perished.

- From New Zealand Photography Collected by Athol McCredie, Te Papa Press, 2015.