Australia: The Land Where Time Began

A biography of the Australian continent 

Wolfe Creek Meteorite Crater  (Kandimal to the local Aboriginal people.). About 90 km south of Halls Creek, Western Australia

Wolf Creek Crater National Park

It has been dated to about 300,000BP. About 90 km south of Halls Creek

This crater, one of the largest and most notable landforms of its type in the world, having a near perfectly circular shape and remains comparatively uneroded, it is made more noticeable because it is situated on flat pains of the Kimberleys.

This is a more sharply defined meteorite crater than the bigger but older ones such as Gosse's Bluff and Lake Acraman. At 850 metres in diameter at the top of the crater rim and 107 metres deep. The bottom 55 metres have been filled in with wind-blown sediments. It is the largest known meteorite crater in Australia containing meteorite fragments and the second largest in the world.

Aboriginal dreamtime stories tell how the crater was formed. 2 rainbow snakes travelled across the country, forming Sturt Creek and Wolfe Creek as they moved across the ground. Wolfe Creek Crater is the place where one of them emerged from the Earth.

Sources & Further reading

Helen Grasswill & Reg Morrison, Australia, a Timeless Grandeur, Lansdowne, 1981

Links

1. Wolf Creek Crater
2. Wolf Creek Crater
3. Ancient Scars