Henbury Meteorite Crater

With only 150 km to drive and no need to arrive early, we had time for coffee and a few odd jobs, including gas bottle, larder and fuel refills. We then bid a temporary farewell to Geoff and Sue and headed south, arriving at our camp at Henbury Meteorites Crater National Park some two hours before dusk. This provided ample time to walk around several of the 4700 year old craters. There are twelve in total, ranging from 6 m to 180 m in diameter, the deepest is 15 m deep. We picked up fragments of what may well be bits of meteorite before the sun set – I just need a magnet to check what is potentially meteorite and what is stone. Because I missed out on Wolfe Creek and Gosse Bluff, I was keen to see these craters, and they didn’t disappoint, being exactly how I imagined them, almost perfectly formed and very ‘cratery’.

Henbury

Next morning we were rudely woken before dawn by the arrival of a 4WD. After watching the sun rise together Kris and Sam went back to bed while James and I, keen to see the craters in the dawn light, went out to investigate. The culprit turned out to be a bloke called Andrew Gregory, a long time photographer from Australian Geographic magazine, here on assignment. He had a quad-copter drone and was videoing and photographing the craters as part of the magazine’s 30 year anniversary special on the Red Centre. He had driven here from Sydney in two days, and was off to Uluru for lunch! Someone doing something crazier than me for a photo!

Soon we were alone again at the craters. We packed up and headed east on the Ernest Giles road, a 100 km dirt road shortcut towards Kings Canyon.

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