Volcanoes: Carrying on a family passion
- Janine You could say that the passion for volcanoes runs in my veins. I don’t remember an age when I wasn’t fascinated with volcanoes. I imagined the extinct Waikato volcanoes that surrounded my home town in New Zealand erupting with huge ash columns and fire. I would stare wide-eyed at the Tongariro Volcanic Center volcanoes and dream of working on them as a grown-up thinking, “this is way too cool to be a real job”. My interests were fueled by my grandfather showing me videos of his trips to Vanuatu, watching the active lava lake, and my grandmother telling me how scary it was hearing the dangerous bombs that occasionally flew past. A distant cousin also completed a PhD in volcanology ahead of me under the same advisor studying the Coromandel volcanic zone in New Zealand. I was especially fascinated with Ngauruhoe, a cone on the central North Island Tongariro complex. My grandfather told stories of how he and my grandmother were on a trip to Taranaki volcano to the west ...