Halls Creek & Wolfe Creek Crater 3-5/8

After our wonderful 2 days at the Bungle Bungles we headed to Halls Creek where we checked into the caravan park. The park is just fairly basic but has all the usual facilities, which allowed us to catch up on some washing. The next morning we arranged to leave our van at the park overnight for the princely sum of $2.50 so we could take the trip out to Wolfe Creek Crater. Before leaving Halls Creek we took a drive out to Old Halls Creek, the site of the original town during the short gold rush of the 1890’s. On the way we stopped to wonder at a formation called the China Wall. This strange looking natural formation is an almost perfect stone wall of hard quartzite rock sticking up above the surrounding strata. It is about a metre wide and up to four metres high and extends for more than a kilometre as far as we could tell. Made up of tightly fitting blocks of creamy quartz rock it would be a structure any landscaper would be proud of.

About 18 Km south of Halls creek you find the intersection of the Tanami Road or track as it otherwise known. The Tanami is the shortest distance from the Kimberley to the eastern states via Alice Springs. Alice Springs is over 1000 Km away but thankfully we only had to travel about 112 Km down the track to the turnoff to Wolfe Creek Crater. The Tanami is a pretty good gravel road, which, for the most part could be driven in a conventional 2WD vehicle, as long as you were careful. Not so the 23 Km access road to the crater. This road is very badly corrugated with washouts and potholes and in some places is strewn with sharp rocks, great care is needed. We set up our tent in the rather open camping area before taking the 500-metre walk to the crater later in the afternoon. Formed when a large meteorite crashed to earth some 300,000 years ago it is the second largest of its type in the world. Standing on the rim and looking across the 850 or so metres to the other side makes you glad you where not here when it happened.

After a peaceful quiet night we packed up camp and travelled back to Halls Creek where we re-fuelled and stocked up with a few basic supplies before returning to our van. Because it was now early afternoon we decided to stay one more night and get an early start the next morning.