The fire-devil of Henbury
A crater field where people would not drink the water.
Key facts
- People and tradition
- Arrernte and Luritja peoples of Central Australia
- Region
- Australia
- When
- Recorded in the 1920s and 1930s
Some stories about this place are sacred and shared only by their custodians. This page describes only what has been publicly recorded.
The story
The Arrernte name for the Henbury crater field is Tatyeye Kepmwere. When outsiders began to study the craters in the 1930s, accounts recorded from Aboriginal people of the area said that people would not camp nearby or drink rainwater collected in the craters, for fear that a fire-devil would fill them with iron. One elderly man explained that his grandfather had seen the fire-devil come down from the Sun.
Other stories about the site, recorded later, describe the craters being made by Ancestral Beings, including a lizard-woman, during the Dreaming. Many traditions connected with the place are sacred and are not shared outside the community.
What science says
The craters were made about 4,200 years ago by an iron meteoroid that broke up in the air, and thousands of pieces of iron lie around them. A story of a fire-devil from the Sun that left iron behind fits that remarkably well. Researchers who study these accounts are careful: some were recorded after scientists had already begun work at the site, so ideas may have mixed. But it is possible that the memory of a witnessed impact was carried for over 4,000 years.
Did you know?
Henbury is a protected conservation reserve, and the traditional owners have a role in caring for it.
Aboriginal Australian oral traditions are among the oldest continuous traditions in the world.