Tonight ` are our classrooms war zones? My advice to men considering teaching in NZ is do something else. Kids turning on the teachers. It's far too dangerous. One teacher's experience... You can't walk down the hallway without someone punching you. ...on education's front line. I formed the opinion that Mr Smith had been appallingly treated. Minus-4 AC is equal to 0. They know that when they add the sugar to the food, we buy more. Sugar is food's new bad guy. This is a substance as addictive as nicotine which is embedded in everything we consume. Diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver disease, cancer. All of those things are the reason I call it a poison. Soft drink in the fridge? > Soft drink in the fridge? > Never ever. Flavoured milk? > Flavoured milk? > Never ever. You can't go past how absolutely stunningly beautiful they were. Touted as the eighth natural wonder of the world. Until this. They heard the sonic booms in Auckland. What really happened to the Terraces. If they're gonna be anywhere, they'll be there. Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright TVNZ Access Services 2012 Kia ora, I'm Miriama Kamo. On paper he was the perfect candidate ` a massive CV, a wealth of experience, and the best of intentions. But Gregg Smith could never have anticipated the reception he'd receive as a brand new teacher at Dannevirke High School. Bullying and harassment, verbal and physical assault by some students. He says it almost destroyed his life. And just 18 months after he started the job, it was goodbye, Mr Smith. But as Janet McIntyre reports, Mr Smith was never going to go quietly. My advice to men considering teaching in NZ is, 'Do something else. 'Don't go anywhere near NZ education. It is far too dangerous.' TRAIN HONKS He came to NZ ` 18,000km across the globe ` leaving behind an illustrious career to become a schoolteacher. I thought that I had this entire world of experience that I could share with these kids. Gregg Smith believed his specialist skills could help NZ children learn to love maths. I could make the mathematics alive for them and make it a real thing that they could enjoy. Smart,... Worked at the Pentagon for four years. he helped his own country prepare for possible war. And we'd say, 'If somebody attacks us like this, what happens if somebody attacks us like that? 'What happens?' But he said nothing prepared him for the battle of Dannevirke High. I don't know what they could have done to prepare you for this. Maybe send you to Afghanistan for six months. Um, that would be my suggestion ` um, go to a war zone. GIRL: There's a rapist in the room... BOY: Don't look at me, <BLEEP>ing homo. These are the kinds of attacks Gregg Smith says he was subjected to, and he says it got worse. You can't walk down the hall without somebody punching you. This was meant to be secret. Gregg Smith signed an agreement with the school to keep quiet. Now he's published a book about the whole saga. GIRL: Hate you, Mr Smith. You tried to rape me. Are you breaching your agreement with the school by speaking to us now? I almost certainly am. I almost certainly am. Are you concerned about that? Um, I think the truth's more important than the agreement. It's quite a brave thing you're doing. I had to do it. I mean, I didn't have a choice. I mean, I was confronted with this enormous, um, injustice. Velvety hills and warm prevailing westerlies lead to Dannevirke in the Central North Island ` quaint, flat and orderly, where the 5000 folk are proudly fierce-knit, friendly and look out for one another. And it's here Gregg Smith, perhaps the most highly qualified trainee teacher ever in NZ, accepted his first-ever teaching job, thinking he could enhance the lives of Dannevirke's schoolkids with his own unique life experience. DRUMS BEAT RHYTHMICALLY As a teenager himself, he was selected from thousands to study at the elite US Air Force Academy, specialising in engineering and mathematics. He was named Air Force Cadet of the Year. Basically, we were trained to be generals. (CHUCKLES) Assigned to America's strategic air command, keepers of the US nuclear arsenal,... I built tools in responses in case of a nuclear war. ...he then worked around the world in senior engineering roles. By the age of 52, Gregg and his wife, Janet, parents of two grown boys, wanted a lifestyle change, and on holiday in NZ, he made a snap decision. Every time I turned on the TV, there was an ad that said 'Teach NZ ` we need maths and science teachers'. AD: How about a job teaching it? Call 0800 TEACH NZ... And I said, 'I can do that for you.' It does seem an incredible transition to make ` to leave such high-level jobs to come to NZ to be a schoolteacher. Why? Why wouldn't you want people who've had high-level jobs and all these experience to be your schoolteachers? If b2 - 4ac = 0... 'People think you study mathematics because you wanna learn how to add or learn how to multiply.' No, no. That's just a part of it. The` What I think is the more important part of it is to learn how to take abstract, difficult problems and struggle` and struggle against them and keep struggling until you get it. I mean, nobody cares, when you're 28 years old, if you can find the integral or sin of x dx. But if you can tackle a problem and keep batting your head against it until you solve it, people care about that. And that's what you learn in maths class. In 2004, after paying his own tuition fees and undergoing extensive police background checks in seven countries, Gregg Smith was accepted into the Dunedin College of Education and graduated one year later. Very enthusiastic. He put a lot of time and effort into being up to date with what we were teaching and how we were teaching. Allan Garbutt supervised the trainee Gregg Smith teaching physics for six weeks at Otago Boys High. I thought he would fit in well somewhere. It's just a case of actually, you know, applying for a job in the right school and seeing his strengths and then putting him in the appropriate position, because I'm sure he would have enhanced a lot of science departments around the country. Gregg accepted a job in Dannevirke, he says, because it reminded him of his childhood in a small town in California. Very very similar environment to what I had when I was growing up. BOY: Shut up, white boy. But the children of Dannevirke, at least, some of those in his classes, turned out to be very different from the ones he'd grown up with. GIRL: Hurry up, <BLEEP>. They told me, you know, they didn't like mathematics. They told me they didn't want me as a teacher. They told me I wasn't teaching them right. Did they say why they didn't want you as a teacher? Well, one thing they said was they didn't want a foreign teacher. Why didn't they want a foreign teacher? I don't know. They just said they wanted a teacher from NZ. For the students at Dannevirke High, Gregg Smith, a middle-aged rookie maths teacher with an American accent, who was living alone then ` his wife was to join him later ` he was unusual. And so were some of his teaching techniques. I had them build hotels out of Lego blocks. And the mathematical purpose of it was to figure the volumes of the hotels. But they built these fantastic hotels. With my Year 9 class one time, I gave them Wonka bars. I went down to the cinema and I bought` I paid for cinema tickets for every kid to go to see Willy Wonka. I paid for cinema tickets for every kid to go to see Willy Wonka. Why did you do that? Because I thought it'd be fun. And because I thought it'd be the absolute last thing that kids would expect in a maths class. The only way you can learn to do something is to practise it yourself. He says there was method behind the madness. And you have to make the effort to learn these things, otherwise you just don't learn anything at all. Coming up ` how did it all go so terribly wrong? Like, just his personality wasn't` wasn't really the same as ours and other teachers would come across. I formed the opinion that Mr Smith had been appallingly treated and that his requests of his employers for assistance just fell on deaf ears. POP! POP! Oops. Gregg Smith, an unusual teacher ` he tried to win his class over with surprises. Thank you. Thank you. Show us. > Somebody would say something really good and clever, and I'd say, you know, 'And your prize for that... 'is a dog!' (CHUCKLES) You know, and I'd give it to them. So, you know, OK, maybe a little stupid, but... It came across as that he didn't know how to teach and didn't have the authority needed. Peta and Jess, ex-Year 11 students of Gregg Smith's, good students, according to him ` not among the troublemakers. So how did the balloon animals go down? < Not too well. < Not too well. Yeah. Kind of a bit of a joke, really. A lot of people threw that back in his face. Yeah. > Yeah. > Yeah. Cos, like, balloon animals are for children, not for first-year NCEA students. not for first-year NCEA students. Yeah. > Do you accept they felt that balloon animals for Year 11 students really wasn't appropriate? Uh, that's too bad, because they really shouldn't let go of that magic of childhood and give it up. It was the first sign of a rift between Gregg Smith and his pupils. Within a few weeks, content had turned to chaos. It escalated into violence ` people throwing things at me; people throwing plastic Coke bottles at me; people throwing rubbers at me. Um, some really nasty comments, and it hit me square in the chest. He still has copies of discipline slips he filled out to get students removed from class for bad behaviour. For example,... (READS) 'Today he was in the hall and he pushed the door into me as I stood by it. 'He's very aggressive.' You say to some kid, you know, 'Do your work,' and she says, 'Get out of my <BLEEP>ing face, you homo.' OK, so that happens to you once, you just laugh it off. But when it happens to you three or four or five times a day every single day ` you go into work and you're being assaulted ` you can't walk down the hall without somebody punching you, uh, you're getting missiles thrown at you ` you're` you're constantly on edge. How much was the fact that you're American a factor in this? I think it was a fairly big factor. We had multiple instances, in fact, where kids were bragging, um, 'We're gonna send that Yankee <BLEEP> back to America.' Um, it seemed to be a campaign they had, uh, and they seemed to take pleasure in the fact that they were going to send me back to the United States. He could've, you know, felt like an outsider, because, you know, we are so tight-knit. Um, but then, we are very friendly as well, and quite welcoming of others. What support did you get from the school? I asked people to come to my class and help me, and some of my colleagues did, and some made suggestions, um, which I did, but, uh... But by and large, from the school, you know, their attitude was, um, 'There are no problems with student behaviour, 'and you need to go home and think about what character flaws you have 'that are causing the students to act this way.' Did you go home and look at your flaws and look at yourself? (LAUGHS) Well, to the extent I could, but, um, you know, I was there to teach mathematics. They should've` The students should've been coming in to learn mathematics. Worse was to come for Gregg Smith. Much worse. I came into my classroom one time and saw, written on the board, 'G Smith is a paedophile'. And then somebody yelled at me from across the street, 'There goes the paedophile.' And one of my colleagues warned me that there were rumours in the town that I was a paedophile. There was a campaign amongst some girls to deliberately drop pens so Gregg Smith would pick them up. Then they alleged he was looking up their skirts. Some ex-students now say that wasn't fair. He was being nice. You know, that's who he is. He's a nice person. He'd go along and pick up the pen. And so, you know, people would go, like, 'Oh, you're a paedophile for looking up so-and-so's skirt.' It's, like, 'Well, he was just picking a pen.' Right. > Right. > It's simple. (LAUGHS) So do you see now, Jess, that he might've been misunderstood? I think with the paedophile thing he was misunderstood. Yeah. < Were you looking up girls' skirts? < Were you looking up girls' skirts? No, I wasn't looking up girls' skirts. (CHUCKLES) Do you even have to ask? What effect did this have on you personally? Well, I got depressed, and I certainly lost a lot of my motivation for wanting to teach. Gregg Smith says after 18 months at Dannevirke, the school brought competency proceedings against him, effectively questioning whether he was fit to be a teacher at all. For him, that was the last straw, and he quit. Yeah, it was like a complete and utter failure, um, and... had no idea what was going to happen next. It was like my entire life had come to a screeching halt, um, and it was over. Gregg Smith complained to the Employment Relations Authority, resulting in a confidential out-of-court settlement with the school. But he says there was no apology; no culpability admitted by the school. He sought redress from the Education Review Office, the Human Rights Commission, even the then-prime minister, Helen Clark. Finally, he reached a sympathetic ear with Robert Hesketh from the Human Rights Review Tribunal. I formed the opinion that Mr Smith had been appallingly treated by, uh, a small number of pupils at the school, um, and that his requests of his employers for assistance just fell on deaf ears. Director of human right proceedings Robert Hesketh assessed Gregg Smith's case. He wasn't protected by the school. But Mr Hesketh says he found he was unable to bring proceedings against Dannevirke High because of a legal loophole. What you really want is for the school to be held to account for not having proper mechanisms in place to protect, um, teachers and others from racial and sexual harassment by pupils. So you're saying the school can't be held to account for students bullying teachers? A school has no liability, um, under the Human Rights Act when that happens. That doesn't seem right. I think it's a gap in the law. So do you think this gap should be closed? Yes. There should be an amendment to the Act which requires schools to have policies and procedures in place, um, to protect people like Gregg Smith. METAL GRINDS The man who gave up a glittering career to help NZ kids learn maths no longer dreams of teaching. He's turned his mind back to aircraft ` smaller ones these days ` working as an engineer in Auckland, developing high-tech unmanned drones. How does it compare to teaching? How does it compare to teaching? This is a lot more exciting and interesting for me than teaching, but I didn't go into teaching because I thought it was going to be exciting and interesting. I went into teaching because I wanted to do something good for people and to kinda give something back to the community. His days of teaching are over, but he says there are still lessons to be learned from his Dannevirke experience. It's very difficult in this society to` to complain and say, 'Something's wrong.' People are punished. You know, people are abused. And when you say, 'Help me. Help me. Something's wrong,' then you're attacked further for complaining. So I hope that this can raise public awareness and get, you know, some effective means of dealing with this kind of abuse. So we invited Dannevirke High School to be interviewed for our story. It declined, but gave us this statement. It said, 'These historic accusations, now six years old, were dealt with at the time 'and considered as part of a settlement that remains confidential to both parties. 'We cannot break that confidentiality. 'However, we can say that there has never been any kind of investigation of the school by Robert Hesketh, 'the Human Rights Review Tribunal or any other human rights agency.' The school went on to say 'the board and senior management is almost entirely different 'to the one in place during Mr Smith's brief tenure at the school, 'while the pupils involved six years ago are obviously no longer here. 'the claims he makes are regrettable and were dealt with at the time.' That's the school's response in its entirety. So let's move on. Next ` Peter FitzSimons and his fight with flab and sugar. So how much is 20 kilos? It's... that much. That is how much weight I have lost in just two months. The weird thing is I didn't cut out sausages. I just cut out sugar. We love sugar. Can't get enough of it. Each of us consumes about 30kg a year. But are we loving sugar to death? Scary new research tells us sugar is just as harmful and deadly as alcohol and tobacco. An overindulgent and overweight Peter FitzSimons has taken the matter personally. Very personally. FLAMES CRACKLE There are few sights as spectacular as the sugar fields being set alight before the harvest. But these days not all is sweet with sugar. They know that when they add the sugar with the food ` they know we buy more. This is a substance as addictive as nicotine which is embedded in everything we consume. Growing up, I was firmly told the worst thing a spoonful of sugar on my cereal could give me was a toothache. But lately I've been wondering... did sugar also make me fat? Obesity is just one of the crimes that food's new bad guy, sugar, is being accused of. It gives us type II diabetes, it gives us heart disease, it gives us fatty-liver disease. It encourages the growth of cancer. All of those things are the reason I call it a poison. At my flabbiest, I was 144 kilos heavy ` a far cry from this young man. WOMAN: Three, two, one, go. This was me at my peak. Back then, I was playing rugby union for my country and was even nominally ranked as the third fittest person in Australia. But it's FitzSimons who takes the points and the overall lead. Stop. > Australia's greatest athlete? You're looking at him. Australia's greatest athlete? You're looking at him. Is that right? But here on holiday in Africa with my family a few months ago, I realised there was a lot more for my wife to cuddle than ever before. You'll love it, Dad. It's fantastic. You'll love it, Dad. It's fantastic. And, darling, when he says` when he says go, do it. Can I have a kiss? Kiss. 'I was frankly worried the bungee cord would snap.' Three, two, one, swing. In my holiday photos, it was obvious that the difference between me and the elephant beside me was only a few kilos and a red bandana. So there I was ` New Year's Day, fat as a fool, getting no change from 144 kilos in the shade. Then I read this book ` Sweet Poison. It has a very simple premise: if you wipe sugar out of your diet, you actually feel less hungry, and then you end up losing lots of weight. Too easy. Where do I sign? David Gillespie, the author of Sweet Poison, was once fat too, weighing in at 122kg. Since he stopped sugar, he's lost 40 kilos. This year it's sugar; a couple of years ago it was salt; before that it was the Atkins Diet; before that again I don't know what ` the carbohydrate diet. I mean, why is this one any different to any other one? Um, because I-I'm not selling a diet. I'm not` I'm not selling you some magic potion that you've gotta go and buy or anything like that. Yes, there's a book about it, but I'll tell you what the book says. It says 'don't eat sugar'. Done. David is a lawyer and says the evidence against sugar is compelling. Sugar damages us in multiple ways. The first way is that it's converted immediately to fat by our liver. I've got that part. But it's only a bad thing if we're eating vast quantities of the stuff. There's a much more insidious effect which it has, which is it interferes with two of our appetite-control hormones ` the hormones that tell us to stop eating everything. So we have this substance that's directly turned into fat and gives our bodies permission to eat more of everything. It was in the early 1800s that sugar was first able to be mass produced cheaply. MAN: All over the world, millions are reaching for Kellogg's new Sugar Frosties. By the turn of last century, food companies were licking their lips. These new Kellogg's Sugar Frosties are... These new Kellogg's Sugar Frosties are... BANG! BANG! ...shocked with sugar, packed with two-fisted muscle-building energy. They knew they were on to an absolute gold mine. It started appearing in everything. Chocolate was invented around the turn of the 20th century. Soft drinks were invented around the turn of the 20th century. All as vehicles for carrying this brand new white gold that they knew they'd put it in something, it sells like crazy. Here's a way of thinking about it. Our ancestors ` they really only had sugar one month a year. It was called 'harvest time'. The fruit would drop from the tree, they would eat it. When we only had a small amount of sugar, it was fine. But now, this amount ` it's killing us. In San Francisco, I found Dr Robert Lustig ` a world authority on obesity and one of sugar's harshest critics. It's ingrained in our DNA. Even babies know that if it's sweet, it's safe. And so the food industry has basically utilised that evolutionary principle to their own benefit. Yeah, Nutella. Yeah, Nutella. Nutella? As my search for answers about sugar continue, I met the Spencer family. Mummy! This is how they shopped until two months ago. They tried to buy healthy, but also tried to keep the kids happy. (SQUEALS) When son Jackson turned 4, the sugar highs hit a new low. My son's birthday's a week before Christmas, so the combination of all the sugary birthday food, cakes and Christmas just accumulated into him being completely unbearable. And I just sat down and explained to him one day that the sugar's making him crazy and we have to stop it. The Spencers went cold turkey. No sweets, cereals or fruit juice, which, I learnt, is full of sugar. And after you cut sugar out of his diet, did you notice a gradual or an immediate change? It was pretty much immediate. His sleeping patterns, his routine, came back into line again, and... just a happier kid all round. MEAT SIZZLES No sugar does take getting used to, and it doesn't mean denying yourself everything. Have a look at breakfast. A month in, I've dropped 10 kilos. My touch-footy mates were noticing the weight slip off me. so what are you doing to lose the weight, Pete? > so what are you doing to lose the weight, Pete? > Well, I've had no sugar whatsoever. And what about the grog? > And what about the grog? > I've had five days ` I couldn't say exactly how long ` without the grog, but I think five days, four hours and three minutes. Um... but I think five days, four hours and three minutes. Um... FRIENDS LAUGH > We've been told that cereals are often full of sugar, but healthier-looking food can be worse. Trouble is that when you turn it over and look at the fine print on the back, you see that it's 80% sugar. (GASPS) (GASPS) There's more sugar in that then there is in chocolate; there's more sugar in that than there is in most lollies. I was shocked. That's organic apple snacks. Right there it's got 'no added sugar', and when you read the fine print, it's actually 80% sugar. Does that shock you? No. It's fruit. Are we gonna ban fruit? Do you really wanna ban apples and oranges and bananas? In Queensland, Senator Ron Boswell has another point ` sugar means jobs. 17,000 Australians are employed by the industry. We're the world's third largest raw-sugar supplier. But critics like Robert Lustig argue sugar's harm outweighs any benefits. He wants punitive taxes and age restrictions on the sale of soft drinks. < Therefore you should be over 18 years old before you can drink a Coke? That would be my suggestion. That's just a ludicrous proposition. What does he want ` someone to turn up with their licence or their age identity and produce it before they buy a can of Coke? Yes. Yes. Well, put that to the people and he will be laughed out of Australia. He's a passionate advocate of it. He is a scientist. He's gone through the research. His premise is that sugar is killing us. It's a natural product. Taken in moderation, it doesn't do anyone any harm. UPBEAT MUSIC JAMIE OLIVER: I need to open this city's eyes to what's going on. This is the stuff I've gotta do to get people to pay attention. One 8 ounce little tub of flavoured milk has 28g of sugar. What I'm gonna do right now is I'm gonna pump this bus ` this icon of trust ` full of one week's worth of added sugar just for flavoured milk in the LAUSD. TV chef Jamie Oliver wanted Californian parents to know how much sugar was in the chocolate milk their kids were drinking. OK, guys, you think we're done? We are done. We're done now. We hear from one side that sugar is toxic and the other` people saying, 'Oh, no, it's OK in moderation. > Where do you fit? > Well,... (SIGHS) It's a t` It's not tough at all, actually. Um, sweetness is joy. It's happiness. It's in our DNA to be drawn to sweet fruit, to honey. But the massive part of the problem is that there is sugar hidden in everything,... Right. > ...whether it's flavoured milk, whether it's bread, whether it's spreads, whether it's sauces, uh, whether it's, um, all kinds of food additives. Um, it's just laid in everything, and I think that's where the out-of-controlness gets. On a Wednesday night in the Oliver household, when you're on dinner, which I presume is most nights, do you feed your kids dessert with sugar? Um, twice a week? Yeah. > Yeah. > Twice a week. I mean, they'll have fruit ` fruit and yoghurt. Soft drink in the fridge? > Soft drink in the fridge? > Never ever. Flavoured milk? > Flavoured milk? > Never ever. Seven glorious weeks without a spoonful of sugar, and my own decision to cut out sugar was put to the test again. I'd lost 13.5 kilos. It was like magic. And then I met this bloke. There's nothing magical about it. But for me it's magic. I've been on the yoyo diet for the last 25 years, 30 years ` up and down and up and down ` and I simply get rid of sugar, and it's just going down before my very eyes. Most people can sustain these kinds of diets for about six months. But by 12 months, they've gone back to their old eating habits. You've got to stop thinking about food as the enemy. You've gotta get back to basics ` real foods, whole foods, whole ingredients. So, Shelly, what would you have had for breakfast this morning? Dr Alan Barclay ` the chief scientist of the Glycemic Index Foundation, which argues a moderate amount of sugar should be a part of a healthy diet. He makes an interesting point, which would be stronger if the foundation didn't accept money from food companies selling products with sugar. All I can say is that we endorse foods that have been tested according to their GI that meet strict nutrition criteria, and part of that endorsement process ` there is a licence fee to use that logo on foods that meet our nutrition. That's the very long answer. The bottom line is that we, the people, and I'm one of them, we don't know. We` We don't know. we don't know. We` We don't know. I think we've answered that question, Peter. Mm. I don't think we have. MAN YELLS Last week ` 128.3. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Hup! (YELLS) This week survey says... 126.8. Well done, Pete. Does it surprise you ` no joke ` eight weeks ago I stopped all processed foods, all sugar, > and I've dropped 17 kilos? Does that surprise you? > and I've dropped 17 kilos? Does that surprise you? > No, not at all. How am I looking? How am I looking? You look good. If I was a woman, I would. (LAUGHS) Here we go. The moment of truth on the scales of justice. (EXHALES) 'I've lost 20 kilos.' Yes! So how much is 20 kilos? It's... that much. That is how much weight I have lost in just two months. The weird thing is I didn't cut out sausages. I just cut out sugar. Oh. That's a bit sobering, isn't it? When we come back, we're in search of the eighth wonder of the world. TRANQUIL MUSIC It's really beautiful; quite mysterious. This is where the Pink Terraces, it's thought, once stood. Only now they're 40m below us. Are they still intact? Are they still there? What condition are they in? The terraces at Lake Rotomahana in the Bay of Plenty ` one pink, one white ` were once known as the eighth natural wonder of the world. Then, tragically, they disappeared in one of our worst natural disasters ` the eruption of Mt Tarawera. For more than a century, it was assumed these beautiful silica structures had been destroyed by the eruption. But that just might not be the case. Here's John Hudson. SOARING MUSIC They were truly a freak of nature ` the likes of which the world has never really seen before. When you look at all those photographs, when you see all the paintings done by the various artists, I mean, they were truly majestic. You can't go past how absolutely stunningly beautiful they were. You read all the accounts of people having seen these for the first time, and` and they're awestruck. Cornel de Ronde ` scientist on a mission to map one of the world's youngest geothermal systems and to try and find the fabulous Terraces once known as the eighth natural wonder of the world. It's really beautiful. Quite mysterious. This is where the Pink Terraces, it's thought, once stood, only now they're 40m below us. Are they still intact? Are they still there? What condition are they in? On the night of June 10th 1886, Mt Tarawera erupted violently, and the eruption lasted several hours. SONIC BOOM It was gigantic ` unzipping the Earth's crust, hurling millions of tons of mud and rock into the air along a 17km rift. They heard the sonic booms in Auckland, by all accounts. And of course by far the greatest, most devastating part of that eruption was when the magma came up underneath the pre-existing Lake Rotomahana. SONIC BOOM Effectively the lake got blown up into the air, plastered all the hillsides with mud, and over 100 people lost their lives that day. Most of those who perished were Te Arawa living near the lakes. The bodies of these people would've been blown kilometres into the sky by the eruption. Dr Ron Keam, an expert of the 1886 eruption. Why was it assumed the Terraces had been destroyed? Because this convulsion clearly had been centred as much at Rotomahana as it had at Mt Tarawera. The crater where Lake Rotomahana had been was massive ` 3km in diameter; more than 100m deep. Both the Pink and the White Terraces had simply disappeared. There was the problem that nobody actually surveyed the area before the volcanic eruption so nobody could place exactly where they had been. It may be 126 years since the eruption, but the chaos it caused is still craved into the landscape. This is incredible. This fresh roadside cutting tells the story of just one day in history. The black strip here is the topsoil that existed before Tarawera erupted. Everything above it is the mud that was blasted out of the lake during the eruption. Topsoil ` June 9th; lake mud ` June 10th. Today the lake is five times the size it was in 1886 because the outlet was blocked by mud and rock from the eruption. It simply landed there, and it's still there today. The level of Lake Rotomahana is now 40m higher than nearby Lake Tarawera. It's very active. The red-hot magma below the lake is still sending geysers to the surface. What's your hunch at this stage? What do you think is there? I think what we're going to find is that there's a lot more explosion ` volcanic explosion craters ` and if we are really lucky we might find there's a few more of these Terraces. A year ago, a team from GNS Science set out to reveal the secrets below the lake's surface. Last year, we had a team that comprised a number of different institutions around the world. And they brought over an autonomous underwater vehicle ` and they look a bit like MX missiles. And they can be programmed. And they go in the lake and they hug more or less the lake floor. The AUV's side-scan sonar is capable of detecting hard objects on the lake floor. And we came up with some pretty spectacular results. That is just mind-boggling, eh. I mean, that's not something you see in geology or on the ocean floor normally, right? The side-scan sonar revealed hard surfaces, and photographs taken when a camera was lowered to the lake floor confirmed the discovery. It's like, you know, we found them and they are still there. Cornel and his team believed they had found a small part of the Pink Terraces ` a spectacular discovery. A piece of silica, terrace-like shapes, but still many unanswered questions. It's what we still hadn't done ` it was the gaps that drove us to come back and to finish the job. After the break ` the hunt for the Terraces continues. It's in this region here where if they are going to be anywhere, they'll be there. You'll need to learn these new rules. This is rule change number one. When you're turning right, you'll need to give way to left-turning vehicles. Think ` Let's see that again. If you're turning right, give way. These changes come into effect at... The wet summer has left Lake Rotomahana at it highest level in 21 years. So that was an island, but now and it's submerged. Navigation might be tricky, but last month provided ideal conditions for seismic mapping. And this multi-beam sonar scanner is lowered below the boat. Now the scientists can see the lake floor in far greater detail. This time we mapped the lake at a resolution of half a metre, so it's 30 times better. So effectively it's just a much better pair of glasses that you're sticking on than you had last time. Yes. Look at that. I just absolutely love the resolution, man. The new map means they can see through the lake, comparing some of the distinct features that are now underwater to old photographs. This is where the Terrace is per se. The Terraces are still likely to be covered in metres of sediment. For me, I think, the jury is still out a bit. Um, but there are suggestions of seeing topography that fits. See, I think that might be... But Cornel thinks he's found where they should be under the lake floor. Anyway, so this was really key last year ` this promontory sticking out, so-called, and because that tells you where you are in real space with respect to the Pink Terraces. And there it is there, and here it is here. So if that's true, then it's in this embayment, so in here somewhere, I reckon, are the terraces if they still exist I think the map has been an absolute gem. The map has` has shown us all the craters that occurred during that 1886 eruption. None of these things have been seen, at least since the lake started to fill, and probably not been seen by anybody for 125 years. Now they want to try to see not only the lake floor but also what is under the sediment on the bottom. We've effectively now stripped the water off. Now we're going to strip the sediments off, and we're going to bring back, if you like, the June 10th 1886 eruption surface. Gotta need two people. Gotta need two people. Yeah, I'll help him. To do that requires another boat, another crew, another gadget, a cable filled with hydrophones and a boomer. BOOMER CLICKS You can hear the 'boom boom boom' of the sound source going off, and then behind here again here by the buoy is the receive end, which will get the acoustic signals. The sound waves penetrate the soft sediment on the lake floor, reflecting off any hard surfaces beneath. By navigating a tight grid pattern across the surface, they should be able to build up a picture of the structure beneath the mud. There's history here. There's a whole lot of a different component to this survey, if you like, or to this project, that I'd not normally have in my everyday life. The local iwi were most affected by the eruption. Many were killed. For the survivors, their land and the tourist business they'd developed were destroyed. A few thousand people would be visiting per year by the time the eruption occurred, yeah. So the local hapu were commercially very savvy, clipping the tourist ticket all along the way. That's true. Yes. Yes. From the mid-1850, tourists came to Te Wairoa ` the village buried by the eruption. From here, they were rowed across Lake Tarawera to Rotomahana to experience the terraces. The culmination was having people bathe in the warm bases on the Pink Terraces. And there they were under the open sky and in a natural bath, being able to peer over the edge and look down on the lake of Rotomahana below and the steam rising from all the hot springs, and it was a unique situation; a unique opportunity. So the Terraces are an important part of NZ history. Can this new survey show us if they've survived? It's shown us a number of things, not least of which is that the system works, which is always pretty good. By midway through last week, the first of those seismic charts was taking shape. One of these lines we did yesterday comes up through where from the bathymetric map we think the terraces should be if they are going to be around, and it's this section in here that's quite disrupted in terms of its seismic presentation. So what does the culmination of two years' surveying add up to? This is real. This is not made up. This is not somebody's imagination. This is real. But have they found more of the pink terraces? Yeah, I'm fairly confident that that's probably what it is. I mean, obviously what you'd love to see is some sort of image that I'm sure everybody has in their mind, but when you` when you add up all the pieces of evidence, I think it strongly suggests that this is likely to be the remnants, yeah. Is there any way that you can say whether they're intact or not? Not at this stage. I think that we have reached the limit of the gear that we have. So you've managed to fill in some of the gaps. Perhaps not all of them. Yeah, no, there's still some mysteries. This lake doesn't give up all its information too readily. SOARING MUSIC The story of Tarawera is far from over. Its just 126 years since it exploded so violently, and that means it's still a youngster ` a very excitable youngster. There's an enormous amount of CO2 coming off that magma body and coming up through the strata and in through the lake itself. It doesn't bother today's tourists, though. Each year thousands them still flock to Rotomahana just as they did more than a hundred years ago. But instead of seeing the terraces and bathing in them, they hear the story of the lost treasure far below. You don't think the lake should be drained? No, I don't think the lake should be drained. I think it's` it would be a massive undertaking, and you have to be very careful about that, because these geothermal systems are in some sort of equilibrium with nature. What we can do is that we can render this map into a 3-D virtual experience, if you like. And so whilst it is virtual, it's based on real data, so you can effectively fly people down the lake under the water. They can look around at all these different volcanic features. People should very proud of themselves with regard to the Terraces. We set out to solve the mystery, and I think we have. We may never see the Terraces as they once were, but for Cornel, there's satisfaction in knowing they are still there. Just to say, 'Hey,' you know, 'they're not all gone. They're just resting down there.' And they maybe were never gone, ever. Rest in peace. > Rest in peace. > Yeah, I think so. Yeah, particularly painful episode in Te Arawa's history, but perhaps exciting times now for us all. Latest data shows a 40m-wide and three-storey-high stack of very hard material ` exactly where it's believed the Pink Terraces should be. Now, if you go to the GNS Science website, you'll find more on the search for the Terraces. Coming up next week ` Michael J Fox. After seven years of denial and depression, he's coming to terms with Parkinson's. Gidday, Michael. How are you? Gidday, Michael. How are you? Gidday. Good, thank you. I'm Rani. I'm Rani. Hey, Rani, nice to meet you. How are you feeling today? You all right? How are you feeling today? You all right? I am. You'd prefer to go now? You'd prefer to go now? Yeah, keep going. Yeah? When you have Parkinson's, it's all he wants to do ` cure Parkinson's. When you have Parkinson's, it's all he wants to do ` cure Parkinson's. We can all go home, then. (LAUGHS) If you could go back in time, really, you wouldn't change the fact that you got Parkinson's, would you? No, I wouldn't. I absolutely wouldn't. I mean, there's no` I wouldn't at all. It's 20 million years old, and I didn't, uh, I didn't see it coming. That's our show for tonight. Check us out on Facebook...