High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Mount Tarawera is the volcano responsible for New Zealand`s largest historic eruption. Located 24 kilometres southeast of Rotorua in the North Island, it consists of a series of rhyolitic lava domes that were fissured down the middle by an explosive basaltic eruption in 1886, which killed over a hundred people. These fissures run for about 17 kilometres northeast-southwest.