Henbury Meteorites Conservation Reserve is a

protected area Protected areas or conservation areas are locations which receive protection because of their recognized natural, ecological or cultural values. There are several kinds of protected areas, which vary by level of protection depending on the ena ...

in the

Northern Territory of Australia The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory shares its borders with Western Aust ...

located in the locality of Ghan. Henbury craters are a result of one of the few

impact event An impact event is a collision between astronomical objects causing measurable effects. Impact events have physical consequences and have been found to regularly occur in planetary systems, though the most frequent involve asteroids, comets or me ...

s that have occurred in a populated area (few other examples are

Kaali crater Kaali is a group of nine meteorite craters in the village of Kaali on the Estonian island of Saaremaa. Most recent estimates put its formation shortly after 1530–1450 BC (3237+/-10 14C yr BP). It was created by an impact event and is one o ...

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, a ...

and

2007 Carancas impact event The Carancas impact event refers to the fall of the ''Carancas'' chondritic meteorite on September 15, 2007, near the village of Carancas in Peru, close to the Bolivian border and Lake Titicaca.Planetario Max Schreie"Meteorito por el Desaguadreo ...

Peru , image_flag = Flag of Peru.svg , image_coat = Escudo nacional del Perú.svg , other_symbol = Great Seal of the State , other_symbol_type = Seal (emblem), National seal , national_motto = "Fi ...

Description

The reserve is located south west of

Alice Springs Alice Springs ( aer, Mparntwe) is the third-largest town in the Northern Territory of Australia. Known as Stuart until 31 August 1933, the name Alice Springs was given by surveyor William Whitfield Mills after Alice, Lady Todd (''née'' Al ...

and contains over a dozen craters, which were formed when a fragmented meteorite hit the Earth’s surface. Henbury is one of five meteorite impact sites in Australia with remaining meteorite fragments and one of the world's best preserved examples of a small crater field. Henbury was the earliest documented example of impact cratering in Australia.

Meteorite impact craters

At Henbury there are 13 to 14 craters ranging from in diameter and up to in depth that were formed when the meteor broke up before impact. Several tonnes of iron-nickel fragments have been recovered from the site. The site has been dated to ≤4.7 thousand years ago based on the cosmogenic ¹⁴C terrestrial age of the meteorite and 4.2±1.9 thousand years ago using fission track dating. The craters are named for

Henbury Station Henbury Station is a cattle station in the Northern Territory of Australia. In March 2022 Henbury was purchased by Tim Edmunds for A$32 million, including its 3500 cattle. Description It is situated about south of Alice Springs in the No ...

, a nearby cattle station named in 1875 for the family home of its founders at

Henbury Henbury is a suburb of Bristol, England, approximately north west of the city centre. It was formerly a village in Gloucestershire and is now bordered by Westbury-on-Trym to the south; Brentry to the east and the Blaise Castle Estate, Blaise Ha ...

Dorset Dorset ( ; archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the unitary authority areas of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole and Dorset (unitary authority), Dors ...

, England. The craters were discovered in 1899 by the manager of the station, then went uninvestigated until interest was stirred when the

Karoonda meteorite __NOTOC__ The Karoonda meteorite is a meteorite that fell to earth on 25 November 1930 at 10:53 pm near the South Australian town of Karoonda. It is of a rare composition, being carbonaceous chondrite, and is also rare in that it was found so s ...

fell on South Australia in 1930. The first scientific investigations of the site were conducted by A.R. Alderman of the University of Adelaide who published the results in a 1932 paper entitled ''The Meteorite Craters at Henbury Central Australia''. Numerous studies have been undertaken since.

Cultural significance

USGS map of the Henbury craters in Australia

The Henbury crater field lies at the crossroads of several Aboriginal language groups, including Arrernte, Luritja, Pitjantjatjarra, and Yankunytjatjara. It is considered a sacred site to the Arrernte people and would have formed during human habitation of the area. J.M. Mitchell said that older Aboriginal people would not camp within a couple of miles of the Henbury craters. An elder Aboriginal man who accompanied Mitchell to the site explained that Aboriginal people would not drink rainwater that collected in the craters, fearing the "fire-devil" would fill them with a piece of iron. The man claimed his paternal grandfather had seen the fire-devil and that he came from the Sun. An Aboriginal contact said of the crater field: ''tjintu waru tjinka yapu tjinka kurdaitcha kuka'', which roughly translates in the Luritja language as ''A fiery devil ran down from the Sun and made his home in the Earth. He will burn and eat any bad blackfellows.'' This indicates a living memory of the event. A different story was recorded by Charles Mountford that attributed the largest crater's formation to an anthropomorphic lizard woman (called Mulumura) tossing soil out of the crater, forming its bowl-shape. The soil discarded by Mulumura explained the piles of meteoritic iron around the craters and the presence of

ejecta Ejecta (from the Latin: "things thrown out", singular ejectum) are particles ejected from an area. In volcanology, in particular, the term refers to particles including pyroclastic materials (tephra) that came out of a volcanic explosion and magma ...

rays (which are unique to terrestrial impacts but are now gone due to prospecting at the site). This probably relates to Dreaming stories about ancestral lizard beings from the area of Henbury station near the Finke River, just north of the crater field. The

Parks and Wildlife Commission of the Northern Territory __NOTOC__ Parks and Wildlife Commission of the Northern Territory (also known as the ''Parks and Wildlife Division'' in some sources) is the Northern Territory Government agency responsible for tasks including the establishment of "parks, reserv ...

give the Arrernte name for the crater field as ''Tatyeye Kepmwere'' (or ''Tatjakapara''). In 1980, the conservation reserve was listed on the now-defunct

Register of the National Estate The Register of the National Estate was a heritage register that listed natural and cultural heritage places in Australia that was closed in 2007. Phasing out began in 2003, when the Australian National Heritage List and the Commonwealth Heritag ...

. The craters were listed as one item on the

Northern Territory Heritage Register The Northern Territory Heritage Register is a heritage register, being a statutory list of places in the Northern Territory of Australia that are protected by the Northern Territory statute, the ''Heritage Act 2011''. The register is maintained b ...

on 13 August 2003.

References

Literature

* Svend Buhl, Don McColl: ''Henbury Craters & Meteorites - Their Discovery, History and Study''. Edited by S. Buhl, Meteorite Recon, Hamburg 2012, .

External links