Kiss of life planned for sleeping Rotorua geyser

ROTORUA - A long-dormant geyser in Rotorua's Government Gardens may play again.

If attempts to revive the geyser are successful, it will become a living monument to the man who created it more than a century ago - former Rotorua Town Board chairman Camille Malfroy.

The French-born engineer, who arrived in Rotorua immediately after the 1886 Tarawera eruption, discovered how geysers worked.

He made the Pohutu Geyser erupt twice a day instead of once and then turned his attention to the Government Gardens, installing a system of earthenware pipes and wooden plugs to make the "Malfroy Geyser" play at will.

Mr Malfroy's knowledge died with him in 1897, but Rotorua district engineer Paul Sampson thinks the geyser, which has long since fallen into disrepair, can be revived and he has put his plan to the council. "It might not be possible to get it to operate as Malfroy did ... but we've got a chance here of putting it back to pretty closely replicate what he did," he said.

- NZPA