Wolfe Creek Meteorite Crater - WA

Information

Wolfe Creek was named after Robert Tennant Stowe Wolfe, a digger and storekeeper who lived in Halls Creek in the late 1880s. There is some dispute about the status of the crater, some say it is the second largest in the world and some say the fourth. Regardless of this it is still a very impressive sight!
Around 300 000 years ago (during the Pleistocene epoch) a meteorite crashed to Earth, forming an almost perfectly circular crater, 880 metres in diameter. The crater was originally 150 metres deep, although today it is largely filled by sand. The erosion of the crater rim has been slow due to the dry desert climate.
Wolfe Creek Crater is internationally significant as one of only eighteen craters in the world where fragments of the meteorite remain on the site. Near the top of the crater rim, on its western slopes, curious balls of iron-rich rock called 'shale balls' lie scattered on the ground.