Qualla: Boxhole Crater https://qualla.com/boxhole-crater en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:28 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/r/5/b/p/boxhole-crater-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Boxhole Crater https://qualla.com/boxhole-crater Boxhole Crater: Introduction https://qualla.com/boxhole-crater/ Photo credit Summerdrought, CC BY-SA 3.0. Somewhere between five thousand and thirty thousand years ago - geologists still disagree - a chunk of iron travelling at enormous speed slammed into the central Australian desert and punched a near-perfect bowl into the earth. That bowl is still there, a hundred and seventy metres across, its rim sharp and its floor open to the sky - barely weathered by the standards of geology. Boxhole crater is one of the youngest impact sites on the continent, and it sits in country that Aboriginal people have walked for far longer than the crater has existed. A scar this fresh raises an irresistible question: who was here to see the sky catch fire?

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Image: Summerdrought | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/5/b/p/boxhole-crater-wp/r5bp-boxhole-crater-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Boxhole Crater: A Bowl in the Desert https://qualla.com/boxhole-crater/ Photo credit Summerdrought, CC BY-SA 3.0. Boxhole is what scientists call a simple crater - no central peak, no terraced walls, just a clean circular depression where the ground recoiled from a sudden, violent blow. At a hundred and seventy metres wide it would swallow a few football fields, and it lies fully exposed at ...

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Image: Summerdrought | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/5/b/p/boxhole-crater-wp/r5bp-boxhole-crater-a-bowl-in-the-desert.mp3 0:06 2 full Boxhole Crater: The Shearer and the Geologist https://qualla.com/boxhole-crater/ Photo credit Summerdrought, CC BY-SA 3.0. The crater entered the scientific record almost by accident. In 1937, a shearer named Joe Webb, who worked at the Boxhole sheep station, led the geologist Cecil Madigan out to see the strange circular feature in the scrub. Madigan knew at once it was something extraordinary. Poki...

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Image: Summerdrought | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/5/b/p/boxhole-crater-wp/r5bp-boxhole-crater-the-shearer-and-the-geologist.mp3 0:06 3 full Boxhole Crater: Witnesses to the Fall https://qualla.com/boxhole-crater/ Photo credit Summerdrought, CC BY-SA 3.0. Here the science runs into something deeper. The crater is young enough that humans were unquestionably living in central Australia when it formed - this is country of the Arrernte and their neighbours, occupied for tens of thousands of years. Elsewhere in Australia, Aboriginal t...

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Image: Summerdrought | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/5/b/p/boxhole-crater-wp/r5bp-boxhole-crater-witnesses-to-the-fall.mp3 0:06 4 full Boxhole Crater: Reading the Sky's Handwriting https://qualla.com/boxhole-crater/ Photo credit Summerdrought, CC BY-SA 3.0. Boxhole belongs to a small and exclusive club. Only a handful of impact craters on Earth are well preserved, openly exposed, and young enough to have formed within the span of human memory, and Australia's stable, ancient, slow-eroding interior holds more than its share. Each one...

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Image: Summerdrought | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/5/b/p/boxhole-crater-wp/r5bp-boxhole-crater-reading-the-skys-handwriting.mp3 0:06 5 full