Looking at New Zealand - White Island

The island gives its few visitors an almost fearful sense of loneliness — a place where time could be cut short. And no wonder, for everyone who does come here is all too well aware of its grim history ... of how the 1911 company’s efforts to work the island’s sulphur deposits came to a disastrous end.

– From the narration, on the 11 men killed on the island in 1914

The worst hell on earth, a place where rocks exploded in the intense heat, where men had to wear wool instead of cotton because cotton just fell apart in just a couple of hours, where they had to clean their teeth at least three times a day because their teeth went black, and where the land shook violently and regularly sending rocks flying through the air.

– Claude Sarich, a sulphur miner on the island in 1931–32, quoted from Te Ara entry on White Island

This is the most remarkable thing about White Island: that you walk from the beach straight into the centre of an active volcano. [...] To the ordinary visitor it’s a fearsome and strange experience.

– From the narration