The 1887 first descent, by candle and flax raft
A Māori chief and an English surveyor floated into the Waitomo Stream on a raft of flax stems carrying candles. What they found became the country's most visited cave.
They went in on a raft made of flax stems, in the dark, carrying candles, into a hole in the ground with a river coming out of it. There was no reason to assume they would be able to get back out. What Tāne Tinorau and Fred Mace found in there in 1887 became, within two years, a business, and within a century, the most visited cave in the country.
Who first explored the Waitomo caves?
Tāne Tinorau, a Māori chief of the local hapū, and Fred Mace, an English surveyor. In 1887 the two of them entered the cave on a raft of flax stems, floating into the hillside on the Waitomo Stream with candles for light. The stream entrance is the same one the modern tour exits through.
The operator's own account of the history records the raft and the candles, and the encyclopedic record matches it on the date and the names. Local knowledge of the cave predated both men; what 1887 marks is the first documented exploration and survey.
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1887 | Tāne Tinorau and Fred Mace enter by flax raft with candles |
| c. 1889 | Tāne Tinorau begins taking paying visitors through |
| 1906 | The government takes over administration of the cave |
| 1989 | The caves are returned to the descendants of the original owners |
| Today | Held through the Ruapuha Uekaha Hapū Trust, operated by Discover Waitomo |
What the 1887 party carried against what a visitor carries now.
| 1887 | Today | |
|---|---|---|
| Light | Candles | Low-level electric lighting |
| Transport in | A raft of flax stems | A boat pulled along overhead ropes |
| Route knowledge | None, they were surveying | A formed path with handrails |
| Time inside | Repeated long visits | 45 minutes |
What did they actually find?
Two levels of passages running about 1,300 metres in total, in limestone laid down roughly 30 million years ago. The upper level is dry: the chambers now called the Catacombs, the Pipe Organ and the Banquet Chamber. The lower level carries the stream, and it is where the Cathedral and the Glowworm Grotto sit.
The glowworms would have been the shock. A candle in a limestone passage lights maybe a few metres of rock. Extinguish it, let your eyes adjust, and the ceiling of the Grotto turns into something no candle could have prepared them for: thousands of larvae, each glowing blue-green at around 480 nanometres, hanging silk fishing lines into the dark.
The two of them returned repeatedly and surveyed the system. Within a couple of years Tāne Tinorau had opened it to visitors and was guiding them through himself.
How did a private cave become a government asset?
In 1906, the government took over administration of the cave, and it stayed in state hands for the better part of a century. The details of how that happened are the sort of thing that gets summarised in a sentence on an attraction page and takes a book to do properly.
What matters for a visitor is the ending. In 1989 the caves were returned to the descendants of the original owners under the Waitomo Deed of Settlement, and they are held today through the Ruapuha Uekaha Hapū Trust while Discover Waitomo operates the tours. Some of the guides are descendants of Tāne Tinorau himself. The longer account of that return is worth reading, because it is the part of the story most visitors never hear.
That thread runs through the tour in a way people notice without always knowing why. Reviewers write about guides singing in the Cathedral, and about commentary that treats the cave as a place with owners rather than a natural curiosity. One wrote that her guide "sang a beautiful Maori song in the caves cathedral, its was so moving".
The chambers still carry the names the earliest visitors gave them.
| Name | What it refers to |
|---|---|
| The Catacombs | The narrow upper passages |
| The Pipe Organ | A fluted stone curtain resembling organ pipes |
| The Banquet Chamber | Where nineteenth-century visitors ate underground |
| The Cathedral | The tall domed chamber, named for its acoustics |
Does any of it show on the modern tour?
More than you would expect, and the geography is unchanged. The 45-minute tour walks the dry upper level, drops to the underground river, and exits by boat through the stream entrance, which is roughly the route the raft came in by. The Banquet Chamber is named for the meals nineteenth-century visitors ate there.
What has changed is the management. The cave now runs continuous monitoring of carbon dioxide, temperature and humidity, with visitor numbers managed against a ceiling around 2,400 parts per million, because half a million people a year breathing in a limestone chamber is a different proposition from two men on a raft. How that system works is a genuinely modern chapter of the same story.
Photography is also prohibited entirely, which is the rule most visitors notice first. The reason is the colony, not the history.
Is the history worth knowing before you go?
It changes the walking section from filler into the point. The complaint that dominates reviews is that the boat is short and the walk is long, and the walk is exactly where the history lives: the chambers with their nineteenth-century names, the Cathedral, the guide's commentary.
Visitors who arrive knowing what happened in 1887 and what happened in 1989 tend to describe the tour differently from visitors who arrive wanting glowworms. That is not a marketing claim, it is visible in the reviews. The breakdown of where the 45 minutes go sets out what each section holds.
If you want to walk it, the 45-minute guided cave tour follows the route, and you can check live availability and prices on GetYourGuide with free cancellation up to 24 hours before.
Who discovered the Waitomo Glowworm Caves?
The first documented exploration was in 1887 by Tāne Tinorau, a Māori chief of the local hapū, and Fred Mace, an English surveyor, who entered on a raft of flax stems carrying candles. Local knowledge of the cave predated that expedition.
When did the caves open to visitors?
Around 1889, roughly two years after the first exploration, when Tāne Tinorau began taking paying visitors through the cave himself. The government took over administration in 1906.
Who owns the caves now?
The descendants of the original owners, through the Ruapuha Uekaha Hapū Trust, following the return of the caves in 1989 under the Waitomo Deed of Settlement. Discover Waitomo operates the tours, and some guides are descendants of Tāne Tinorau.
How old is the cave itself?
The limestone is Oligocene, roughly 30 million years old, and the cave system carved into it holds about 1,300 metres of passages on two levels. The Te Anau glowworm caves in Fiordland, by contrast, are only around 12,000 years old and still forming.
Can you see where they entered?
The modern tour exits by boat through the stream entrance, which is broadly the route the flax raft came in by in 1887. The dry upper chambers the two men surveyed are the same ones the walking section covers today.