Lake · New Zealand
Lake Taupō
Lake Taupō is the largest lake in New Zealand. It fills a giant hollow left behind by a supervolcano in the middle of the North Island, and the town of Taupō lies on its north-eastern shore.
Picture credit: Krzysztof Golik (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Gadfium (CC0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Lake Taupō?
Countries on its shores: New Zealand.
Largest lake of: New Zealand.
Middle of the lake: 38.81° S, 175.91° E
The story behind it
About 25 600 years ago, the Taupō volcano had a gigantic eruption. It threw out about 1 170 cubic kilometres of rock and ash, and the ground sank into a huge hollow called a caldera. Water filled the hollow, and the lake was born. The volcano erupted again around the year 232. Today the lake is up to 186 metres deep. Rivers such as the Tongariro flow in, and the Waikato River, the longest river in New Zealand, flows out. In the lake lies the small island of Motutaiko. At Mine Bay, Māori carvings were cut into the rock in the late 1970s. The lake is famous for its trout: brown trout were brought here in 1887 and rainbow trout in 1898. No other lake in New Zealand is as big as Lake Taupō.
Find it on the globe
Lake Taupō is there as a small blue dot with its name, right on the water. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
How big is Lake Taupō?
Lake Taupō covers about 616 km²; some sources give 622 km². That makes it the largest lake in New Zealand.
How did Lake Taupō form?
About 25 600 years ago a supervolcano erupted here, and the ground sank into a huge hollow called a caldera. Water filled the hollow and made the lake.
Which fish live in Lake Taupō?
The lake is famous for its trout. Brown trout were brought here in 1887 and rainbow trout in 1898.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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