High on the Volcanic Plateau in the middle of New Zealand's North Island, three volcanoes are viewed from the Desert Road, looking west.
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"You come to a volcanic plateau, clad for the most part in dark green and rusty bracken or tussocks of faded yellow."
William Pember Reeves, 1898.
The panorama was taken in 1996, between the 1995 and 1996 eruptions.
The boiling crater lake is steaming gently in this picture.
The extreme wide angle view clearly reveals the gentle slope of the plateau surrounding Mt Ruapehu.
The slope was built by countless lava flows, ash falls and lahars from the volcano to make a ring plain, which is a feature of the soft rock which makes up a strato-volcano such as Ruapehu.
The most barren part of the Rangipo Desert is to the left. Here we look over tussock grass.
The Desert Road can just be seen on the far right.
The panorama image is four, medium format, individual photographs, fused together.
A polarising filter was used and explains the sky colour gradation.
The very wide-angle view shows where the blue sky is polarised at a maximum (deepest blue).
This is just north of Mount Ruapehu. The sun was to the north (remember - this is Southern hemisphere!)
The maximum polarisation is at 90 degrees to the sun - to the west in this panorama.
The panorama was used on the 1997 wall planner and is copyright to the photographer; John Wattie.
A very large version of the panorama was donated by Schering (NZ) to Green Lane Hospital.
It covered part of the back wall of the reception area in the Xray department.Hospital adminsistrators forbade pictures on the walls of "their" hospitals and the panorama languished in a back office for several years, but they relented and it is visible again now.
Ruapehu last erupted in 1996
Ngauruhoe last erupted 1975
Erupted 1896. A surveyor reported then, "...the surrounding hills for a couple of miles are covered with sand and ash, and the vegetation has been subjected to boiling water."
Mt Tongariro, to the right of Mt Ngauruhoe, has many craters.
It was probably much higher once, but now is an elongated jumble of a mountain.
Mt Ngauruhoe is classed as the most southern of the Mt Tongariro caters.
Ngauruhoe is the only volcano in this panorama to have a classic, conical, volcano shape.
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