Meteorites

Alice Springs – a place where the sun always shines. Well it didn’t for us! The bad weather, which has dogged our steps since arriving in Australia, hit us once again. A couple of weeks ago whilst in Greenvale Sandra asked a horny-handed son of the soil if it was going to rain – casting a rheumy eye to the sky he declared confidently “There won’t be any more rain now until December” – two hours later it was bucketing! However, fingers crossed, we now seemed to have escaped into glorious sunshine.

Leaving a grey, windy, wet Alice Springs we headed south to pop down to Uluru (aka Ayers Rock) – a “must see” destination if you are visiting this part of the world. Magically, within an hour or so, the skies turned blue, the sun shone and all was right with the world again. With confidence oozing we decided it was time to try our luck off road again and turned off the sealed Stuart Highway and ventured onto a dirt track with the grand title of Ernest Giles Road. Our immediate destination was a place called Curtin Springs where we intended to stay the night before heading off to Uluru. Typically however we never made it.

A mere 10k along Mr Giles’ road we saw a sign pointing towards the Henbury Meteorite Conservation Reserve, and, as one of Sandra’s hitherto unidentified passions is for meteorites, we set off for a look. At the end of a dirt track we found a small notice informing us that 4,000 years ago a number of meteorite fragments, travelling at 15,000 kph had landed with a bit of a dunt and left a few craters – four large ones about 80m across and a number of smaller ones. No normal craters these as, prior to the Apollo Moon Landings, American astronauts were shipped over to the middle of Australia to get a feel for what they might experience crater-wise on the moon. Personally I think this was a waste of time and resources as much the same experiences could have been had amongst the slag heaps of West Lothian!

Seriously though they were actually very impressive. The meteorite must has broken up very close to the ground as the four main craters were over-lapping and the rest within a few hundred metres – including my favourite one which was actually outside the conservation area. Only about 20m across, in the centre was a small pool of muddy water which was attracting hundreds of birds and, by the sets of paw prints in the wet mud, dingoes and kangaroos watered there.

The meteorite site was on a vast semi-arid plain with a small escarpment to the south and, having outrun the rain, the weather was very pleasant so, temporarily giving up on Curtin Springs, we decided to stay at Henbury. In fact, with perfect weather, glorious sunsets and splendid isolation we stayed for two nights which gave Sandra the ideal opportunity to get crafting.

For those of you unaware Sandra is “crafting” her way around Australia. Her main project is knitting wire “embellishments” which can be used a brooches, sunhat embellishments etc. Each is decorated with different objects she finds in her travels around Australia – shells, nuts, bark, stones etc. Many of our photographs consist of Sandra bent over double fossicking on beaches and other sites with potential items to be incorporated. They are then mounted on card with her name and the place where the items were found (I’ll see if I can find a photo) Her plan is to build up a stock and sell them at local markets. Whilst she has actually given away more than she has sold (typical – she’ll never make a business woman) those that she has sold have gone for $20 each.
She now has vast reserves of raw materials, which she organises and re-organises constantly, but which she now needs to convert into cash! Her day at Henbury resulted in 14 embellishments or $280 – pity we didn’t stay a few more days!

Reluctantly leaving the meteorite site we packed up and completed the Ernest Giles Road before heading south on another dirt track – the Luritja Road. Cresting a rise an amazing sight met our eyes - on the horizon was what I would describe as an enormous red monolith. Initially thinking we had received our first glimpse of Uluru we realised that this couldn’t be the case as it was still over 200k away. We had come across Mount Conner – a steep cliffed mountain towering above the surrounding plain with a flat plateau top and looking vaguely like something out of a wild west movie. I had never seen or heard of Mount Connor and so can’t really say much more other than, as I type these words for the blog, I am sitting outside our tent looking at this amazing flat red mountain on the horizon.

Uluru and The Olgas tomorrow.

SORRY _ NO PICS