Willy Bennett and Roger Delamere Dansey recall the horrifying night of 10 June 1886, when the eruption of Mount Tarawera killed up to 150 people and destroyed many settlements.

Willy Bennett and Roger Delamere Dansey recall the horrifying night of 10 June 1886, when the eruption of Mount Tarawera killed up to 150 people, mostly Māori, and destroyed many settlements.

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"The time was winter, and the 10th of June to be exact. The year 1886."

The place was the village of Te Wairoa, just west of Lake Tarawera and under the shadow of the massive, three-domed volcano that gave the lake its name. Willy Bennett was 12 years old.

2597606 "I felt the call of Wairoa"

Sixty-eight years later, on the anniversary of the eruption, Willy Bennett sat down with a New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation presenter to recall his memories of that night and of the mountain.

2597607 "Mt Tarawera was never thickly bush-clad"

A few kilometres away to the north in Rotorua, Postmaster and Telegraph Operator Roger Delamere Dansey was at home with his wife and children.

His written account is read here by Bill Beavis of the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation and was recorded in the 1960s.

2597608 "I've since been told that was what's been called an electric cold"

Timeline

12:30am - a series of tremors being to shake the region

2597609 "And so on they came, getting stronger and stronger until the windows of the house rattled"

Dansey ran outside to see what he thought was an electrical storm over the volcano.

Willy Bennett was asleep when the tremors began, but he didn't stay that way for long.

2597610 "It was rumbling like long-distance cannons going off"

After the tremors subsided, Dansey went to bed to read.

In his own words, he had not the slightest idea what was to happen.

A little later his reading was disturbed by a "terrific roar".

Running outside, he saw "an immense column of fire, miles in height" coming from the mountain.

1:45am - The main eruption begins at the north-eastern end of Mt Tarawera

The mountain explodes upwards into an enormous column of black smoke and boiling hot rock.

2597622 "An immense column of fire"

2:30am - A second and a third eruption occur

The final southern eruption bursts with an immense roar which is heard as far away as Auckland.

The smoke cloud reaches a height of approximately 10km and is visible in Gisborne, nearly 150 kilometres away to the south west.

Mount Tarawera is split into a rift running for 17 kilometres…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details