Jason and Gwen Barnes' Honeymoon to Australia
Day 10 Flight over Wolfe Creek meteorite crater

July 18, 2004

We woke up early in Hall's Creek to go take a scenic airplane flight over the Wolfe Creek meteorite crater. At 7am we met Jonathan (our pilot) at the Halls Creek airstrip.

An aboriginal man showed up at the same time and seemed to want to go with us. Jonathan got rid of him and explained to us later what had happened. Apparently there are several aborigonal communities in hard to access, out of the way places. These communities don't produce anything, they exist soley on generous government handouts. During the Wet the communities are totally inaccessible by road, and the pilots make freight runs down there with food and supplies. The government handouts are enough to purchase food, supplies, and their shipping, as well as for them to fly into and out of towns such as Halls Creek. The man Jonathan spoke to was looking for a plane flight out to his community.

The plane was a 6-seater, high-wing Cessna 210. The wind was strong and gusty near the ground. Although there was a paved runway, we took off and landed on a dirt runway which was better oriented with respect to the wind. Jonathan said that for a while the Aussie pilots tried to do everything in metric. But because the US aviation system is so well developed and because they buy their planes from us, they have decided to just go with the flow and use English units for aviation purposes.

It took 10 or 15 minutes to get out to the crater, and then it was a lot less spectacular than I expected. Mostly it looked like a circular sand dune with a disk of trees in the center. Part of the reason was that the center, bowl part of the crater had been filled in with sand, so it looked less crater like. The disk of trees in the center was because during the Wet the crater fills with water that slowly evaporates during the Dry.

We circled the crater 5 times or so, starting high and slowly spiraling down closer to the ground. We could see the dirt road leading to the crater and the camping area. On the way back Jonathan showed us some of the sights around old Halls Creek.

	Large -- Medium	Our plane. Jason is silouetted on the left, our pilot Jonathan on the right.
	Large -- Medium	Gwen's view from the back seat. Guess who is who?
	Large -- Medium	Can you see the crater yet?
	Large -- Medium
	Large -- Medium	rim detail
	Large -- Medium	road, camping area, and carpark
	Large -- Medium	sand buildup
	Large -- Medium	sand dune in front of crater
	Large -- Medium	The large buildup of sand on the windward side of the crater can be clearly seen in these image.

We took A LOT of pictures. If you are really brave and want to see them all unfiltered, click here.