Highlights of Henbury

This morning (Friday) Team Turtle finally left Alice Springs behind and headed south (again).  Our original intentions were to travel into the Henbury Meteorite Conservation Reserve - about 150 klms south of Alice - and spend the night there.

After hooking up Tuf Cat, getting a mid morning start and no other problems, we made it into the Reserve just on lunchtime.  It would have been very pleasant there except that it was still blowing an absolute gale with the winds coming straight out of the Antarctic!  We had hoped that these cold winds would have abated as they had been blowing for the last couple of days - The Captain and The Deckie have had to wear trackies or jeans, jumpers, shoes and socks.   BBBRRRRR - not used to this type of weather!!!

The camping ground area (although very nice) was very open to the elements and so the decision was made to just do the Crater Walk, have lunch and then head further south.

We made sure that we were rugged up nicely and off we went.  The walking path had lots of good interpretative signage and we finally saw our first real live meteorite craters!!!

The Main Crater

 

The Water Crater

The Water Crater is the second largest crater and sits next to the main one.  The position of this crater captures the drainage of a creek and so therefore the crater is continuously damp and has far different vegetation than the main crater.

Looking South From The Crater Rim

 

The valley where these craters are, is quite desolate and reasonably flat.  So, when they scientists were looking for impacts sites in the 1930's, they would not have had too much trouble locating the craters - any hills would have certainly stood out!!

Tonight, we are in beautiful downtown Erldunda - at the junction of the Stuart and Lassetter Highways.  Tomorrow (Saturday) we will be leaving poor old Tuf Cat here and then we will be heading north west to Kings Canyon for a couple of days and then to the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park.

Hopefully these icy winds will go away and our drive will be a little bit more pleasant.