Mention ‘Wolfe Creek’ to people these days and most will immediately turn their minds back to that spooky, quite gruesome Aussie movie that screened in 2005. 

While there is still an ongoing reminder of the film in the area with the presence of the eerie, neglected ruins of an old station building nearby (where, we believe, a segment of the movie was filmed), the much more memorable Wolfe Creek Crater has long-lasting impact and appeal to all those who visit this lonely outback site.

Located approximately 153km south of Halls Creek on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert in the Western Australia Kimberley, the huge hole in the ground out here is full of mystique.

Once the scene of a cataclysmic collision when, travelling at 15km per second and weighing more than a 50,000 tonne battleship, a meteorite slammed into the Earth’s surface around 120,000 years ago. Punching a huge hole in the ground in an explosion that probably would have been felt around the world, the area here would have been a place of total devastation! The energy force many hundreds of times greater than a large atomic bomb pulverised rocks as deep as 200 metres below the earth’s surface and all forms of life for many kilometres around would have been totally destroyed. This massive explosion vaporised the bulk of the meteorite, evidenced by the finding in recent years of only a few small fragments up to 4km away. Today, some rusty balls of the meteorite, known as shale balls, still lie scattered on the slopes of the crater or fused into the ridge’s laterite capping, and contain iron-nickel and iron-phosphite.

Carranya Station ruins

Over the years, the almost circular shape of Wolfe Creek Crater has changed quite dramatically from what it looked like immediately after the collision all those years ago.

With the effect of erosion from wind and rain in this semi-arid region, it is believed that the crater rim, now standing around 50 metres above the surrounding plain (and measuring around 850 metres in diameter), was once significantly higher than what we see today. Within the crater walls, the hole, originally blasted out to an estimated depth of 120 metres, has now been largely filled with dust, sand, and plant debris, to be now only around 20 metres deeper than the surrounding plain.

Wolfe Creek Crater, known to be the second largest meteorite crater in the world, was only recognised by a geologist (conducting an aerial survey of the area) as a meteorite site as recently as 1947. The peaceful and serene area here is now contained within Wolfe Creek National Park, which is managed by Western Australia’s Department of Environment and Conservation.

A section of the camping area at Wolfe Creek Crater

Accessible by a gravel road from Halls Creek in the dry season from May to October (4WD recommended but not essential) or towards the top end of the Tanami Road from Alice Springs, a visit here for us recently was quite a fascinating, even eerie, experience. As the shadows of the rim progressively work their way across the 750-metre crater floor in the late afternoon, the whole scene seems to take on a dark, empty feeling. At night, the crater, with its broad deep hole in the middle, is like looking into a giant black pit. Its mood changes once more at first light in the morning and once the sun reaches the crater floor, there is almost immediately an impression that life is springing back into this lonely outback formation.

There are still some eerie reminders of the film remaining

An information sign board located at the start of the short 200-metre (five-minute) climb track from the car park to the top of the crater rim gives dramatic and intriguing details of the extraterrestrial visitor that once made such an impact here. Outside the crater, the surrounding countryside is flat open plains covered in spinifex, mulla mulla plants, and a few small, scattered trees. Inside it is quite a different scene. On the crater floor, particularly towards its centre, there is quite a heavy growth of acacias (wattles) and paperbarks thriving on the rain water and sediments collected by the crater walls. As there are none of these trees to be found in the drier environment immediately outside the crater, the seeds must have been carried quite some distance by birds and dispersed within the crater via their droppings. Bird life recorded within the crater includes rainbow bee-eaters, finches, and the elusive Major Mitchell cockatoos.

Outback behemoths

From the crater rim lookout, visitors can undertake a full 3km rim loop walk (undulating and rocky) and in addition, there is a walking track leading down the inside of the rim (much steeper than on the outside of the rim) and out across the crater floor to its centre. Apart from the climb down and back up (take it slowly and carefully), this is not a difficult trek and it’s quite popular with visitors. On the day we called in to have a look at this quite unusual natural phenomenon on the landscape, my wife (Prue) and I had the experience, for at least part of the time, of having the whole crater to ourselves. As we stood alone in the centre of the crater, with information about its creation fresh in our minds, a somewhat uneasy sensation came over us as we tried to imagine the event that created this place. We certainly wouldn’t have wanted to be nearby when that happened! We also learned of the Jaru and Walmajarri Indigenous peoples’ Dreamtime legend relating to this area, where two rainbow serpents whose sinuous path across the desert formed the nearby Sturt (Jurabalarn) and Wolfe (Ngurriny) Creeks. The crater is called Gandimalal, the place where one snake emerged from the ground. There is also the story that the crater was formed by the evening star spectacularly falling to the ground way back in the earth’s creation time.

Make sure you’re well-supplied, as the facilities out here are few and far between

Now, we all know the saying that ‘lightning doesn’t strike in the same place twice,’ and logic would also tell us that there would be even less chance of another meteorite (or wayward star) impacting out here on the day we were there, or that we would witness another giant snake’s head emerging out of this great big hole in the ground...but a small sigh of relief could be heard as we climbed out and readied ourselves to set off and rejoin the rest of the world.

Still trying, in our own way, to fully take in the history-making event that created this eerie place, we slowly drove away to the nearby campground, once again leaving Wolfe Creek Crater to its quiet solitude.

A fascinating sight at sunrise, midday, or sunset

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

• Wolfe Creek Crater was named after a Halls Creek prospector/storekeeper, Robert Tennant Stow Wolfe, who discovered and named nearby Wolfe Creek back in 1889.

• There is no national park ranger based at the crater. For enquiries, contact the Department of Environment and Conservation Kununurra on (08) 9168 4200 or head to dec.wa.gov.au.

• Wolfe Creek Crater itself is a day visit site, and the nearby campsite just a couple of hundred metres away has toilets but no other facilities. No permits or fees apply. Take all rubbish away with you. No pets or firearms are allowed.

• This area is isolated with the nearest fuel, services, and supplies at Halls Creek approximately 153km away. Always carry plenty of drinking water and supplies.

• Gravel road — check conditions before travelling at Halls Creek Visitor Centre.

• Wolfe Creek Crater access — turn off the Great Northern Highway 18km west of Halls Creek onto the Tanami Road — gravel road. Travel south 112km along the Tanami Road to the signposted Wolfe Creek Crater turn off to the east. The crater and campsite are 23km along this access road with three gates to be opened and closed along the way. Access roads to the crater are generally fine for offroad caravans, camper trailers, and high clearance campervans. Allow 2.5 hours each way from Halls Creek.

• Some of the interesting features seen along the Tanami Road from Halls Creek include a number of very large trucks carrying mining equipment for the gold and nickel mines further south and also quite a number of wrecked vehicles abandoned on the side of the road. An extra air of spookiness in this region is the fact that nearby Sturt Creek was the site of a massacre of the local Jaru Indigenous people back in 1922.

• Early estimates of the age of this huge crater put the impact date at around 300,000 years ago. However, only a couple of years ago, using new dating technology, a new report confirms a much younger age of 120,000 years.

• For general enquiries/additional information, contact the Halls Creek Visitor Centre on (08) 9168 6262.

The crater was dubbed Gandimalal in a Dreamtime story

Category: Destinations
Written: Wed 01 Dec 2021
Printed: December, 2021
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