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 Gosse Bluff,
an astonishing natural wonder, is a
massive, rock-rimmed crater gouged out by the
impact of a comet one hundred and thirty million
years ago. The comet, a ball of frozen carbon
dioxide, ice and dust measuring six hundred
meters across became a flaming furnace as it
hurtled to Earth.
Although entering only about
eight hundred meters into the ground, it blew up
almost four hundred square kilometers of nearby land.
This astonishing site was created by a meteorite
impact close to eight million years ago whereby
its size was reduced to the erosion. Located on the
vast Tnorala Conservation Reserve,
this impact crater is called Tnorala by the
Aborigines, the Western Photo: Goose Bluff Arrente people, and has
been regarded as a sacred place.
Gosse Bluff,
discovered by Edmund Gosse in 1873, is the core
of a crater that has worn away over one hundred
and thirty millions years. From the original
twenty kilometers in diameter, it measures only
four kilometers presently. Erosion has worn away
tons of debris that once covered it. The bluff,
the crater's double-walled rim of hard sandstone
crags, now rises to one hundred and eighty
meters above the plain. This sandstone was
pushed up by the explosion as layers of similar
rock have been discovered over two kilometers
beneath the surface.
One of the most
extraordinary photos seen is pictured by space
satellite whereby it looks like a massive
thumbprint on the otherwise flat and featureless
Missionary Plain one hundred and sixty
kilometers west of Alice Springs. The main crowd
puller here is that the sandstone ring stands
out as one of the most impressive impact scars
in a landscape littered with meteor craters.
Located nearby Gosse Bluff are the Henbury
Craters, made by twelve fragments of a meteorite
that split as it hurtled in from space less than
five thousand years ago.
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