The luminous Milky Way is not the only feature that makes space feel close in the Central Desert – you can also witness the aftermath of stars that fell to Earth
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“You didn’t mention camping on Mars.”
My wife had a point: thin air, thinner soil, extreme UV, rocks straight from a Nasa red-planet image, jagged ranges – all ideal backdrops for a movie set. No wonder the place was considered for training by the Apollo program. Its sparse life forms include an intimidating shrub whose thorns mimic the stingers on the scorpions that come out after dark. A harsh, forbidding place, but beautiful too. We made shade with our camper awning and waited for magic time: the desert at dusk.
Travelling along the Stuart Highway it’s easy to miss the Henbury Meteorites conservation reserve, 12km off the tarmac along a rough track 1.5 hours south of Alice Springs. We’d seen samples of its space rock in the excellent display at the Museum of Central Australia in Alice and were keen to see where they fell. There are six known impact sites in the Territory and the two most accessible are Henbury and Tnorala (Gosse Bluff). We visited both during Victoria’s fifth Covid lockdown in 2021.
