Jason and Gwen Barnes' Honeymoon to Australia
Day 10 Hike into and around Wolfe Creek meteorite crater

July 18, 2004

Once we landed we got in the car and started out to the crater. It was a dirt road, but a good one, called the Tanami Track. Wemadeabout 80 km/hr. On our way out we saw two cars of aboriginals stopped by the side of the road. Being recently stranded ourselves, we stopped to see if they were okay. They were, but they asked for food and water, which we gave them, and then they asked for a smoke. They seemed quite distressed when we said we didn't have any.

Since the land was so flat, I could spot the crater from a ways away. It just looked like a few low hills.

Our plan was to walk all the way around and all the way through the crater. The only moderate trail was up to the rim from outside the crater. There was no real trail around the rim, although we could make out a path to the left where people had walked a little ways along the rim. There were also paths down into the crater though all the signs discouraged travel there, saying it was dangerous, which it was.

The blue dot represnets a pool of nasty water left over from the last Wet. The entire central part was covered with several millimeters of white salt where water from the wet had evaporated over the years. The green section represents the circle of trees in the center of the crater -- no doubt there because of the water accumulates there during the wet. Red = our path.

We first walked pi radians clockwise around the rim of the crater to a path on the far side going down into the crater. From there the trees in the center looked to me like the forest Bilbo got lost in in the Hobbit. I think it looked like that because the white salt floor made the place look foreboding, not because there were really all that many trees. We went down and crossed the crater floor and back to the carpark where we had lunch. After lunch we went back down into the crater, up the far side, and proceeded to finish our clockwise traverse of the rim. When we were done we had traveled 2 pi radians around the crater and 2 diameters through it. If we take diameter = 1 km (really it's more like 900 m) we traveled ~5km.

The most incredible part of this hike was that my feet were fine the whole way! I am still in shock over this. Will it last? Are my feet fixed? Even if not, I'm glad I was able to do the crater hike, since I'm studying craters for my Ph.D.

Almost all the rocks we saw were red sandstone, but theredid appear to be a layer of red conglomeratemid way down the crater wall. Itwas composed of cm-sized rounded particles.

We did collect a sample of sandstone from midway down the crater wall from an outcrop of sandstone that looked like it as in place. We'd like to test it for shocked quartz.

There was also quite a bit of sand around. At one point Jason ran down the outside of the crater to investigate a low ridge. It turned out to be a sand dune stabilizedby vegitation. We speculatedthatduring climateshiftsthe vegitation goes away and sand can be blowninto the crater.

We also noticed that the far side of the crater (from the carpark) had quite a lot of material built up outside ofthe crater, causing "ground level" outside the crater to be higher than the filled-in inside. At the other places the floor was sitll belowthe outside level, but not by as much.

When we were done at the crater we went back to Halls Creek and stayed at the more expensive place, the same p lace westayed when we got towedfrom the Bungle-Bungle.

Not seeing much else in town we decided to have dinner at the hotel's restaurant.They had a "carvery", basically the same as what we had in Kununara: your choice of meat, bread, veggies, salad, dessert, and soup. The food was pretty good.

	Large -- Medium This is the sign down near the carpark.
	Large -- Medium Jason does EXACTLY what the sign tells him to do.
	Large -- Medium The rock near here primarily consists of this sandstone
	Large -- Medium and this conglomerate.
	Large -- Medium The evil needly spinegrass scratched up our ankles the whole time. It grows all over the Tanami Desert (tan-uh-mai).
	Large -- Medium The trail down the crater rim.
	Large -- Medium The trail across.
	Large -- Medium The south rim.
	Large -- Medium Looking back toward the carpark and the road in.
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	Large -- Medium These llittle lizards were sunning themselves all around the crater rim as we walked it.
	Large -- Medium Gwen hikes north along the west rim.
	Large -- Medium Gwen with some purple flowers we found.
	Large -- Medium I (Jason) decided to head off north of the north rim to investigate the ridge there. I thought it was a sand dune. Since I'm actually there, and not doing photogeology, I hiked over to test my hypothesis. This is Gwen from the bottom of the north rim.
	Large -- Medium Me heading out to the ridge.
	Large -- Medium Sand all right.
	Large -- Medium View in from the north rim.
	Large -- Medium Brecciated rock.
	Large -- Medium Ponds visible at the bottom.
	Large -- Medium Gwen and some upended sandstone.
	Large -- Medium The east rim, beyond Gwen there, isn't very high, as a sand dune has worked its way most of the way up.
	Large -- Medium The trail back across.
	Large -- Medium View from the bottom.
	Large -- Medium Looking up the east side.
	Large -- Medium A salty pond at the crater bottom.
	Large -- Medium Salty dried-up pond.
	Large -- Medium Gwen Barnes.
	Large -- Medium Jason Barnes
	Large -- Medium
	Large -- Medium
	Large -- Medium Arcuate bands of tree growth. Cracks holding groundwater?
	Large -- Medium
	Large -- Medium Looking back toward the crater from about 2 km away.

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