Bush surrounds meet enviable beach stretches with rock pools aplenty (keeping kids amused for hours).

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The centre had recorded details of what creatures lived in virtually every square metre of the rock pools.

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But with magnetic termite mounds to ogle, rock pools to submerge your bod, and three famous waterfalls, it is no wonder.

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The eruption destroyed the Pink and White Terraces at neighbouring Lake Rotomahana, the stepped rock pools that were once touted as the eighth wonder of the world.

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Down in the rock pools, then, the news seems to be mixed: nature is showing a remarkable resilience in the face of man-made interference, but it is still far from clear what the wider impact will be from small changes to local ecology.

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Jacob was born first then Ethan - they survived the birth and I really believed everything would be ok I couldn't imagine them not being around our whole future had been planned with our boys - football on cold Sunday mornings, holidays in Broadstairs paddling in the rock pools and eating ice cream at Morellies - I hadn't planned for them not being there.

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They have hammocks where walls should be, plunge pools, and water-park bathrooms with rock-walled showers where water falls out of the stones-- though after bush showers on safari, we would have been delighted by water running out of anything.

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Drillers have learned to drill horizontally into long, thin seams of shale and other rock that holds oil, instead of searching for rare underground pools of hydrocarbons that have accumulated over millions of years.

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