Why Wolfe Creek Crater attracts scientists, Indigenous traditional owners and horror movie fans
Rare audio recordings suggest Aboriginal people worked out how Wolfe Creek Crater was formed, years before scientists arrived and it became a mecca for lovers of the Aussie horror film.
- Wolfe Creek Crater in northern WA was formed by a massive meteorite smashing into Earth as long as 300,000 years ago
- The crater was a gathering place for Indigenous people for thousands of years, but it wasn't noticed by white people until 1947
- Fans of the eponymous horror movie Wolf Creek visit the crater, even though the bulk of the film was shot in South Australia
The crater in northern Western Australia is so big it can be seen from space.
It has meant many things to many people over the years, from the Aboriginal people who lived there, to the geologists who first formally surveyed it in 1947, and the fans of the 2005 film who now scrawl murder-themed graffiti on abandoned buildings in the desert nearby.
Here are three of those stories: the science, the Aboriginal songs, and the crater's latest incarnation as a pilgrimage destination for horror movie fans.
There are about 300 meteorite craters recorded around the world.
Wolfe Creek Crater is the second biggest from which meteorite fragments have been recovered.
"To me personally it's a very special place and that's on a global basis," said astrophotographer Dr John Goldsmith.
"It was perhaps as long as 300,000 years ago that it was formed, and it is a magnificent site, a beautiful site."
The crater was made when a massive meteorite, weighing more than 50,000 tonnes, smashed into the Earth in what's now the Great Sandy Desert in northern WA.
The explosion vaporised much of the meteorite, but some fragments of it — scattered as far as four kilometres away — have been dated as about 300,000 years old.
The Indigenous stories
Incredibly, the vast crater was not noticed by white people until 1947, when geologists surveying the remote Kimberley spotted the circle from the sky.
But for thousands of years prior it was a gathering place for the Jaru and Walmajarri people.
While the stories associated with the area are rich and varied, Jaru woman Katie Darkie agreed to share those passed on within her family.
"My grandfather's and my mother's country is the Wolfe Creek Crater and around there … it's a really special place to our people," she said.
"In gudia [whitefella] world they say the meteorite fell from the sky to the crater, but Aboriginal people, when they were living there for many, many years, they said it was from when a rainbow serpent fell into the crater, and that's the dreaming of our people."
Ms Darkie said local families called the crater Kandimalal, which means no potatoes, as local people noticed the tasty bush potato didn't seem to grow in the area around the crater.
She has another story that was shared to her as a girl.
"The old people would tell us the story of one old man who went hunting from Sturt Creek [40km east], and he went through the river and he was hunting birds with his dingo and he heard the bird singing on the other side but he didn't know where he was going," she said.
"Then he came up at the other side, he came up through the Wolfe Creek Crater, and so all the people said, in the old days, that there was a tunnel that runs through the ground from Sturt Creek to the crater."
There is another, more mysterious story linked to Kandimalal that suggests Aboriginal people worked out the meteorite strike centuries before Western astronomers set foot on the continent.
In the 1990s, Dr Goldsmith became fascinated by the crater, and on multiple trips recorded the songs and stories of the senior Aboriginal men from the area.
"What surprised me was that the elders had a song referring to the star that fell to the Earth, and it appears it may predate the first contact between white people and Aboriginal people in that region," Dr Goldsmith said.
"It's a wonderful story and [it's] my belief that there was some sort of deduction or association that's going on about how the crater was formed.
"Aboriginal people are very observant of the natural environment and this is one of the remarkable strengths of Aboriginal culture in Australia."
The horror movie shrine
The crater has also become a mecca for fans of the Australian horror movie Wolf Creek, which told the story of several hapless backpackers who were charmed and then abducted by charismatic bushman Mick Taylor.
It was made on a shoestring $1.4-million budget, but made more than 20 times that at the box office; it also solidified the outback, and Wolfe Creek Crater, as places of fear in the minds of many city-dwelling Australians.
It appears fans of the film are continuing to make the trek to see Wolfe Creek Crater for themselves.
A clutch of abandoned buildings, located close to the turn-off, have become a makeshift shrine to the movie's bloodthirsty anti-hero. The sheet metal walls are plastered with graffiti, declaring:
"Mick Taylor was here! Watch out..."
"Graham and Pauline made it out of Wolfe Creek … or did they?"
"We slept rough in this shed, so … scared of the murders!"
Wolf Creek trivia
- The bulk of the film was shot in South Australia, even the sequence where the characters walk up the ridge of what's supposedly Wolfe Creek Crater
- What's the giveaway that the opening sequence, supposedly showing a beach party in Broome, was not shot in WA?
- The sun is shown rising over the ocean, instead of setting
Ms Darkie laughs when asked about the movie.
"We thought the movie was great … but it's funny, the tourists, they're scared about the campground at Wolfe Creek Crater now.
"They keep asking us, 'Is it okay to camp there at Wolfe Creek Crater?' And we say, 'Yeah! We've been living there a long time and never [had] any problems'," she said.
"We go there all the time, stop by on the weekend when we're out hunting … it makes us really happy. We take the kids and we always tell them the stories of Kandimalal."
While you're here… are you feeling curious?