Wolfe Creek Crater

One of the best-preserved meteorite craters on Earth, a ring nearly 900 metres across in the desert.

Key facts

Where

the Kimberley, Western Australia, Australia

Kind

Visitor site

Visiting

Open-air site or visitor centre

Wolfe Creek Crater, in a national park on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert, is a bowl almost 900 metres across with a raised rim. It was made by an iron meteorite thought to have struck about 120,000 years ago. Its floor has filled with wind-blown sand, but the rim still stands about 60 metres above the plain.

To the local Djaru people it is Kandimalal, and their stories link it to the Rainbow Serpent. It came to the notice of scientists after it was spotted from the air in 1947. Rusty iron balls and fragments of the meteorite, called Wolf Creek in the catalogue, have been found around it. The crater can be visited by road in the dry season.

Highlights

• Wolf Creek the iron that made the crater Iron, IIIAB

Related pages

Opening times, what is on display and access to research collections change over time, so check with the institution before you visit.