Wolfe Creek Meteorite Crater National Park, Meteorite impact crater and national park in Kimberley, Western Australia.
Wolfe Creek Meteorite Crater National Park is a national park in Western Australia, 145 km south of Halls Creek, on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert. It contains Wolfe Creek Crater, a near-circular impact crater about 880 m across, with a rim rising 25 m above the surrounding plain and a floor now about 50 m below the rim. The crater is only partly buried by sand drift, and the quartzite layers overturned by the impact are visible on the inner rim.
The crater formed about 300,000 years ago in the Pleistocene, when an iron meteorite of roughly 50,000 tonnes struck at 15 km/s. The Djaru knew the site long before Europeans spotted it from the air in June 1947. The 15 km² national park was established in 1969.
The Djaru people, the traditional custodians of this land, call the crater Kandimalal and connect it to a creation story involving a rainbow snake and the evening star. Walking along the rim, visitors are treading ground that has held deep meaning for the Djaru for generations.
The park lies about 150 kilometers (93 miles) south of Halls Creek along the Tanami Road, which is an unsealed track that requires a high-clearance vehicle. A short walk from the car park leads to the crater rim, and visitors should carry plenty of water given the heat in this part of the Kimberley.
The 760-kilogram Wolf Creek fragment, found in 1947, is the type locality for three minerals first identified in it: cassidyite, pecorite and reevesite. Iron-nickel shale-balls, some loose and some fused into the laterite cap, still lie on the crater slopes.
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