It’s official… we have found the worse road in
Australia! Today we drove 100km on the
Tanami Highway then we turned off for 20km into the Wolfe Creek National
Park. The Tanami was actually pretty
good, but, that last 20kms on the road into the National Park is by far the
most corrugated road we’ve driven on… we
now know what it’s like to have your teeth rattled out…
BUT… it was worth the effort to reach the infamous crater at
Wolfe Creek. For those of you who have
seen the movie, no, there were no John Jarrett-like characters about… and we’re
not foreign backpackers, so we were safe…
About 300,000 years ago a 50,000 tonne meteorite traveling
at 15 km/second crashed into the earth at this very spot. On impact most of the meteorite was
vapourised, however, there have been fragments of the meteorite found up to 4 km
away. All that remains now is an 850 m wide
crater about 20 metres deep (the original crater was 120 m deep but has since
been filled in with dirt and sediment).
For science geeks like us, the remaining crater is pretty
cool to see. You can even work out what
direction the meteorite was travelling by the lower rim height in one section
and the corresponding peak on the opposite side…
The rim
Of course, we scrambled over the rocks down the steep slope to enter the crater. Here’s the view about half way down.
The view from the floor of the crater
We made it to the very centre of the crater where there was a mass of Mulla Mulla flowers…
Later that afternoon we came back again to sit on the rim while the sun set behind us. Aiden entertained himself by making a spear head (apparently)
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