catalogue of western australian meteorite collections

"Preface
The Meteorite Collection of the Western Australian Museum is a small
one but, because it has been made from a part of the earth's surface which has
not _been extensively collected, it is of great scientific' interest. Accordingly,
this Catalogue by Dr. McCall and Mr. de Laeter is very welcome, particularly
since no list of meteorites in the Western Australian Museum has been published
since those in Bernard Woodward's Guides to the Museum in 1900 and 1912.
Knowledge of meteorites in Western Australia stems from the discovery
of several large lumps of meteoritic iron in the 1880's and 1890's when agriculture
was pushing out into the fringes of the original York settlement towards
the East. These, of which the first appears to have been brought in during
1884, were call~d the "Yo~ndegin Meteorites" after a police post which was
the last out-post of civilization at the time; they w~re actually collected near
Pikaring Rock in what is now the well-populated Quairading area. It may be
safely assumed that these were the first meteorites to come into the collection.
They are octahedrites, chiefly interesting because of the unusual abundance of
the rare mineral cohenite.
This was the first milestone in the history of these collections. Others
that may be mentioned were the discovery of the Ballil100 meteorite in 1892,
important because it was found to be an octahedrite of extreme rarity displaying
a very fine etch pattern; the discovery in 1916 of another meteorite of the same
rare type at Mount Magnet; the discovery of the unique Bencubbin stony-iron
meteorite in 1930, which was followed by a second find in 1959-no other
meteorites of this type, or anything approaching this type, have been recorded
in any part of the world. Another event of recent years was the fall of a stony
meteorite at W oolgorong Station on the Murchison in 1960, Both because the
recovery of this stone allowed a most interesting study of atmospheric ablation
producing orientation characteristics, and also because this fall revived interest
in meteorites in Western Australia. The most recent, and by no means least
significant, increment to our knowledge occurred as late as 1963 when the
Mount Egerton meteorite, originally found in 1941 and recorded as a stone of
very unusual type, was rediscovered after more than a year's fruitless search.
It was found tb be a stony-iron meteorite of a type hitherto unknown-again
a unique find.
The discoveries of probable meteorite craters must also be significant, for
only a handful of occurrences of such craters of any dimensions are known
throughout the world and two have been discovered in Western Australia.
The Dalgaranga crater was recorded by E. S. Simpson in 1938 but relatively
little was known of it until H. H. Nininger and G. 1. Huss introduced the details
of this occurrence to the scientific world. The much larger Wolf Creek crater,
comparable with the world-famous Arizona crater and the lesser-known, analogous
craters of Quebec and Algeria, eluded discovery until 1947. In spite of gen~ral
accounts by F. Reeves & R. o. Chalmers and by D. J. Guppy & R. S. Matheson
and further discussions by W. Cassidy, L. LaPaz and G. J. H. McCall it remains
a regrettable fact that, as in the case of the smaller Dalgaraqga crater, the problems
posed by this enigmatic crater must be considered as yet largely untouched
because of lack of funds.
The fact that we have such a collection of meteorites of world-wide significance
must be largely attributed to the interest and continuing scientific
work of a very high standard by the late Government Mineralogist, Dr. E. S.
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