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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 5, Issue 5 (September 1, 1930)

The Earth-Mother's Thumping Heart

The Earth-Mother's Thumping Heart.

It was a sufficiently weird experience to spend a night at Tikitere. On one of my long rides around the Lakes country, and into all sorts of queer corners; I put my horse in the near-by grass paddock, and, after tea with the old couple, slept, or tried to sleep, in one of the guest-huts of slab-and-thatch that composed the tiny hamlet of the Boiling-Mud Valley. All night long there was a quiver in the ground, as one lay on the mat-covered floor, and now and again a hollow thump reminded one that the fearful pools of ever-boiling water and mud were only a few yards away.

But it was safe enough, said Alice and Paddy. They had eaten and slept and loved on the brink of a visible hell for many a year, and there was little change in that valley of uncanny sounds, sights and smells all their life there. Even the Tarawera eruption and earthquake in 1886 hardly affected Tikitere's features at all.