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Met Name

Met Type

Thin Sections

3.1 grams.   LL6

TKW 25.85 kg. Fall not observed.


Graham writes:

By L. J. SPENCE, C.B.E., M.A., Sc.D., F.R.S.
Formerly Keeper of Minerals in the British Museum.
[Read March 26, 1936.]

This stone was collected by Mr. R. Bedford in October 1934 'about twenty miles north' of Lake Labyrinth. He gives the locality more precisely as about eight miles north of Peela rock-hole and well on the Wilgena sheep station, and the latitude and longitude as approximately 30° 20' S., 134° 45' E. At his request it is described as the Lake Labyrinth meteorite. Peela Well I have not been able to find on any map available. Plotting the latitude and longitude as stated, I find that the spot lies between Tcatree Well and Sextabyng Wells, 1.27 miles NNW. of the western end of Lake Labyrinth, and about the same distance north of the Trans-Australian railway line. It lies north of the Warburton Range. The following graphic account of the finding of the meteorite is quoted from Mr. Bedford's letter of November 20, 1934:

I heard a rumour that a half-caste Australian aboriginal working at shearing round that district knew of a meteorite up there, and the rumour seemed sufficiently definite to justify our making the trip, a total distance of about 600 miles by motor-truck. We were successful in finding the aboriginal, who proved to be a most intelligent and observing man, his name Billy Austin. He had just been shearing at Kukatha station, and was on his way to North Well, a section of the great Wilgena station of 200 square miles area. He readily agreed to come with us and show us the meteorite, from which we were then some 65 miles distant by the station tracks. Billy informed us that a light and a rumbling noise had been heard in the district on the night of about February 5, 1924, this date being as near as he could remember. About a fortnight later, whilst travelling on the station, he found, in the remote spot above mentioned, a hole in the ground with dirt freshly scattered around ; bushes about were freshly burnt and scorched, and at a little distance lay the meteorite, which was already commencing to break up, one lump lying between the hole and the meteorite. Some time afterwards he brought a piece to Mr. McBride, the owner of the station, who, he thinks, took it to Adelaide ; and he showed the spot to a visitor from Mr. Gambler, who took a piece. For the last six or seven years Billy had not revisited the spot, and apparently no one else would be able to locate it without his assistance ; and for these six or seven years no further attention was given to the find. When we visited the spot we found the small crater to be at the foot of a red, sandy rise; the vegetation was mulga scrub, sufficiently dense to make it impossible to have located the spot without Billy's assistance, though he himself walked onto it with perfect accuracy. Mr. Ken Peters, my assistant, who was driving our truck, and is himself no mean bushman, was greatly impressed by the way in which Billy guided us over the long, deviating route, often without a track visible, without a moment's hesitation. The crater, when we saw it, was a shallow, saucer-shaped depression 12 feet across, having been largely filled up by washed and blown sand. We dug it out; it must have been originally about 4 feet deep in the centre; we confirmed Billy's assurance that no meteorite material was present in it. The meteorite lay 30 yards west of the crater, up the slope of the sand-rise. Billy, from his original observation, was of the opinion that the meteorite had struck a glancing blow and then rolled on to the point where it lay ; otherwise I should have thought that it had been blown out of the crater by a back-fire.

Billy says that the surface [of the meteorite] was originally shiny, though it is now dull, and that inside it was green. The less weathered fragments are still greenish-grey, but weathered fragments are brown. The specimen is now so fragmentary that it is impossible to reconstruct it entirely ; but it is clear that it was originally a spheroid with diameters of 9, 8.89 and 7 inches. Part of the surface was rugged, with smaller and deeper 'thumb-marks', while the rest was more regularly spherical in curvature with wide and shallow markings. Allowing for pieces that had been previously removed, the original weight of the meteorite is estimated as about 75 lb. The actual total amount of the fragments recovered is 57 lb.