In Geyserland's Capital

The white population of Rotorua is about four thousand. The town is in no way cramped for room; it spreads leisurely over a wide area of level ground, and houses are now dotting the roadside right out to Whakarewarewa, two miles away. Rotorua, once clothed with nothing but stunted manuka, is a delightful place of shade and flowers. The pumice soil grows trees and flowers wonderfully well. The tall plantation of eucalyptus and other trees that borders the railway station is quite a little forest, the growth of fewer than fifty years. There are many pretty private gardens, and if now and then a hot spring or sulphur “mudpot” may be heard gurgling and bubbling in a corner of the garden, the flowers seem all the more rich and more fragrant for it. Photographs of the town taken before the opening of the railway in 1894, and those of to-day reveal a most remarkable contrast. Rotorua now would hardly be recognised as the little village of the pre-railway era. It is quite as advanced as large cities in some important respects. On the Kaituna River, at Okere, the swift outlet of Lake Rotoiti, twelve miles from the town, the natural water force is utilised for the generation of electricity for the town. There is an excellent gravitation water supply, pure and inexhaustible, from great springs high up on the Moerangi range.

Less than half a century has seen Rotorua's development into a comfortable and beautiful modern town, a resort for travellers from all parts of the world, people who come to these waters of healing to rid themselves of their aches and pains, and win freedom and suppleness for crippled limbs; thousands of people, too, who come for the pleasure of travel in a novel country, a land full of scenic surprises and thrills and again, fishermen who find in Rotorua and Taupo the finest trout-angling in the world. Here is a State spa building, with baths of every kind, and every sort of scientific apparatus designed to supplement the good work of the healing waters. Here is a Government Sanatorium, a hospital, where those disabled by rheumatism or other trouble for which these springs are a panacea, are admitted on certain conditions. New and greatly improved buildings are now being erected there. On Pukeroa Hill amidst groves of English oaks, is the King George V. Hospital, a large institution originally established for wounded and sick soldiers. This is to be closed, and its place taken by a new sanatorium in the Government gardens.

The hotel and boardinghouse accommodation for travellers is quite equal to that in the large cities of the Dominion. Numerous large hotels, including three licensed to sell liquor, stand in convenient nearness to the railway station; and there is one at Whakarewarewa.

Motor cars ply about the streets, and motor-launches on the lake, at Rotorua's front door. The fisherman will find all the tackle he requires in the town shops; every branch of business is represented here, and there is no need to trouble about laying in a special equipment for travel and sport before coming to the town. All parts of the thermal country, the East Coast and the interior of the Island, are readily reached by motor car services. Lake Taupo is only a few hours by motor distant; the Tongariro National Park can be reached in a day's run; Tauranga, Whakatane, and other parts of the Bay of Plenty, are within easy compass by scenic roads.