Broadlands, Taupō: Rural Area Guide to Dairy Farms and Geothermal Country

Last updated October 2026

Broadlands is a rural farming locality on the pumice plains between Taupō and Reporoa, recorded across both Taupō District and Rotorua Lakes District. The country is flat to gently rolling, formed on Taupō pumice alluvium, with the Waikato River lying to the west. Dairy pasture is the main land use, broken by shelter belts, lifestyle blocks and pockets of forestry.

Broadlands Road runs through it as a rural arterial, carrying local traffic, milk tankers and logging trucks as an alternative to State Highway 5. This is a working district rather than a visitor township: the landmarks are farms, a primary school and the cooling tower of the Ohaaki Power Station on the Ohaaki-Broadlands geothermal field.

Official Locality Facts

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About Broadlands

Broadlands sits in the Reporoa Valley country of the Taupō Volcanic Zone. Council route studies describe the land beside Broadlands Road as mostly pastoral, with the settlement itself holding a mix of housing, industry and community activity, plus scattered lifestyle blocks and small areas of cropping and forestry.

The predominant farm type is dairy, so milk tankers are a daily part of the road. The wider economy of the corridor depends strongly on agriculture and, to a lesser extent, forestry.

The English name belongs to a farming estate. Broadlands School traces its start to the mid-1930s, when E. Earle Vaile sought a school building on five acres of his Broadlands property. Early classes used a shearers’ dining hall in the homestead enclosure.

Published school history records the school as established by 1937. It remains a contributing primary in the heart of this farming district, and it is the clearest community anchor in the locality.

Māori association with this country is centred on the geothermal ground at Ohaaki rather than on a separate traditional name for Broadlands that can be confirmed here. Iwi directories list Ōhākī Marae and the Tahumatua meeting house, in the wider Reporoa area, as a meeting place of Ngāti Tahu, within Ngāti Tahu–Ngāti Whaoa.

The Ohaaki Ngawha, the field’s main natural hot pool, is recorded as a culturally significant geothermal feature, with recent sinter around it. Geothermal research has also used the name Te Ohaaki o Ngatoroirangi for the marae beside the pool.

European interest in the heat under these plains followed the development of Wairakei. Resistivity surveys identified a large body of hot water, and the first well east of the Waikato River was drilled in late 1965.

Further holes in the Ohaaki area found high-temperature fluid, and a full exploration programme followed. The Ohaaki Power Station, owned by Contact Energy, was commissioned in 1989. Its cooling tower, about 105 metres high, is the landmark most people notice from the surrounding farmland.

Day to day, Broadlands is quiet rural New Zealand with an industrial edge. Residents live among dairy farms and a working geothermal steamfield, not beside a lake resort or a town square. There is no shopping strip to wander.

People drive to Reporoa or Taupō for services, and the road itself is as important as any building: it is how milk, logs and local traffic move between the two districts.

Getting Around

Broadlands Road is classified as a rural arterial. On the Rotorua Lakes side it continues the Settlers Road and Reporoa Road route; on the Taupō side it runs through to the Miro Street and Crown Road connections toward State Highway 5.

Together those roads form an alternative arterial between Taupō and Rotorua, used by freight as well as local drivers. Route studies have recorded a high share of heavy vehicles, including logging trucks and milk tankers, on a relatively straight and level alignment across the plains.

The road crosses numerous streams and drains, some of them in gullies cut into the pumice. Passing opportunities are frequent because the country is open, but that same straight character has been linked with overtaking crashes.

Treat it as a working freight road: allow room for tankers, and do not assume a sealed shoulder or a footpath. No public transport service to the locality was identified in council descriptions of the route, so a private vehicle is the practical way in.

Geothermal Country

The Ohaaki-Broadlands geothermal system lies in the Waikato region, northeast of Taupō and immediately south of State Highway 5. The New Zealand Geothermal Association describes a field of about 5 to 11 square kilometres.

Waikato regional planning classes it as a Development Geothermal System: energy use is allowed, but significant effects on important geothermal features are to be remedied or mitigated. The system was already in large-scale use when that classification was set, and surface features had already been impaired.

The station began with a capacity of 114 megawatts. Steam supply later fell, one high-pressure turbine was retired, and output dropped well below the original figure before new wells lifted production again. Published figures for present output differ, so this guide does not state a current megawatt number.

What is clear is the environmental record: subsidence at Ohaaki has led to flooding, and a large share of the fluid is reinjected rather than discharged. A small portion has supplied a wood-drying kiln. Lucerne drying and geothermally heated greenhouses have also operated here in the past.

Natural features that remain significant include the Ohaaki Ngawha, heated ground, and geothermally influenced springs near the Waikato River. Geothermal vegetation on the western steamfield is of regional significance, including heated dry ground, fumaroles and an at-risk population of prostrate kānuka. Part of the eastern steamfield is protected by a QEII National Trust covenant and also holds geothermal kānuka.

This is not a public geothermal park. The power station is an operating industrial site. Stay on public roads, do not enter station land, and do not walk onto unmarked hot ground or sinter.

Hot-ground hazard areas are also mapped on the eastern fringe of Taupō, toward the southern end of this road corridor. For a geothermal landscape that is set up for visitors, look to sites elsewhere in the district that are run as attractions, rather than to the Ohaaki steamfield.

Community and Heritage

The settlement recorded on district planning maps is small. Those maps have also noted a cemetery and a water supply at the corner of Homestead Road and Broadlands Road, a recreation reserve a short distance north of that corner, and the Taupō gas lateral passing the settlement. Those are planning records of local infrastructure, not a town centre.

The school, farms and the power station are what define the place for most people who live or drive here.

Broadlands School, at 2986 Broadlands Road, teaches Years 1 to 6 and publishes a weekly bulletin for families in the district. Older students look to schools outside the locality. Reporoa, a short drive north, is the nearer rural service settlement, with its own college and shops. Taupō covers the larger weekly shop and most specialist services.

Heritage here is layered rather than monumental. Ngāti Tahu maintain a marae presence at Ohaaki, tied to a ngawha that geothermal development has put under pressure. The Pākehā farming story is the Vaile estate and the school that grew out of a shearers’ hall.

The twentieth-century layer is scientific: the Broadlands field became one of the most studied geothermal systems in the Taupō Volcanic Zone, and then an operating power station whose cooling tower still marks the plain.

Where to Learn More

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Broadlands part of Taupō?
The locality is recorded across both Taupō District and Rotorua Lakes District. Broadlands Road runs through both. The school uses a Reporoa rural delivery address.

What is Broadlands like?
It is a working rural district of dairy farms, shelter belts and lifestyle blocks on flat pumice country, with a small settlement and a primary school. It does not have a town centre.

How do I get there?
Drive Broadlands Road, which links the eastern side of Taupō with Reporoa and works as an alternative to State Highway 5. A private vehicle is needed. No scheduled bus or train service was identified.

Is there a school in Broadlands?
Yes. Broadlands School at 2986 Broadlands Road is a state primary for Years 1 to 6. It began on the Broadlands estate in the mid-1930s and was established by 1937.

Can I visit the geothermal field?
No. The Ohaaki Power Station is an operating Contact Energy site, not a public park. Stay on public roads, and keep off station land and unmarked hot ground. The cooling tower is visible from the surrounding country.

What is the Ohaaki Ngawha?
It is the main natural hot pool of the Ohaaki-Broadlands field and is listed as a culturally significant feature. Large-scale geothermal use has affected surface features, and subsidence at Ohaaki has caused flooding.

Why are there so many trucks on Broadlands Road?
The road is a rural arterial. Milk tankers serve the dairy farms, logging trucks use it as a through route, and it also carries inter-regional traffic avoiding State Highway 5.

Where do residents shop?
There is no town shopping centre in Broadlands. Everyday services are in nearby Reporoa or in Taupō.

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Explore Taupō only lists suburbs officially recognised by Land Information New Zealand (LINZ), and Broadlands is one of them. Suburb boundary: LINZ, CC BY 4.0.