White Island, so named by Captain Cook in 1769 for its endless clouds of steam, is where Neil Oliver had one of his most daredevil adventures while filming across New Zealand.
"We had to land by helicopter and it's a great steaming, sulphurous live volcano," says the Scottish TV presenter and author. "There was a constant sound of roaring, it's in the process of making, of being a volcano and it felt a faintly terrifying place to be because it could, of course, go big. We had gas masks around our necks so we could quickly put them on if the thing decided to do something.
"So that was a terrific thing to see. It had the look of a chemistry experiment gone wrong."
Oliver, who has been a familiar face on British television since 2002, has been exploring much new territory in recent years under Coast, the magazine-style program featuring experts from different fields in an appealing and accessible mix of travelogue and social-history documentary.
It's a startling thought that before 2013, Oliver, 49, had never even been to this part of the world. Since then he's spent sporadically well over a year filming three seasons of Coast Australia, mostly accompanied by his wife and three children who travelled from their home in Stirling, Scotland, and has now brought New Zealand into the fold of his popular documentary series.
"It's very intense," he says of his experiences. "I was in my mid-40s before I ever came to the Antipodes at all and since then, I've been all over it. I've probably seem more of Australia and New Zealand than most Australians and New Zealanders, because the kind of endless expense in terms of money and time and effort that you've got to make to have seen as much of it as I've seen, you've got to take a couple of years off work. And who's going to do that?"
New Zealand is actually the source of all his southern hemisphere adventures in recent years. The original Coast has been traversing the coastline of Britain since 2005, with Oliver starting as the show's archaeology and social history reporter before taking the main presenting role. In 2013, Auckland production company Great Southern TV convinced Oliver to embark on an Australian version for Foxtel based on the BBC format and it proved a ratings smash both here and in Britain.
He is currently in Australia filming season three, on the back of filming for 16 weeks across New Zealand last year.
"It's a privileged position to be in to get the opportunity to travel the way that I do," he says. "I am almost self-conscious about the fact that I've seen so much of these countries that the nationals haven't seen. I mean, everywhere that anybody mentions, I say 'oh yeah' I've been there'. I feel a bit embarrassed about that almost.
"It's just a real privilege because television is a magic carpet, it provides you access to places that people can't get to."
Coast New Zealand begins by taking in the Fiordland, visiting the locations of early settlers and putting the spotlight on the local crayfish industry and dolphin population.
"It's this remote, lost, wild place – unchanged really. It will look the same as it did to the first Europeans that contacted it, it will look the same as it did for any Maori who were there. It's a remarkable place."
Oliver and his team, geologist Dr Hamish Campbell, maritime archaeologist Matt Carter, marine biologist Jacky Geurts and TV presenter Riria Hotere, take in some of the highlights of New Zealand's 16,000-kilometre coastline over six episodes.
"I'm mindful all the time that I'm an outsider and I mustn't be seen as seeking to tell New Zealanders anything about their country, because that would be patronising," he says. "What it is, I think, what is valuable is it gives the people of a country the opportunity to hear the thoughts of someone's first impressions.
"No matter how well you know a place or how long you've lived there, there's always something valuable or an insight to be had from hearing someone's first impression, because it makes you look with fresh eyes at something that might be very familiar to you.
"I hopefully go on a genuine journey of discovery, I'm seeing things for the first time and reacting to them. And also, in almost every place of significance that we go to, I am meeting someone who does know the place very well. And that could be a Maori tribal elder or it could be a local who has been living there for a lifetime and has a story about an event to tell me.
"My role, and indeed the role of all the presenters, is really to be the conduit for the real story that's going to come in from someone who has it to tell."
The story of New Zealand is that it's a "tempestuous, turbulent" place as the last place on earth to be settled by humans.
"It's so dynamic in the geology and geography of the place, and also in the interaction of the people here. It's a hotbed of life. It's a dynamic, constantly changing, quite potent place."
WHAT Coast New Zealand
WHEN History, Monday, May 9, 8.30pm
