The Forgotten Meteorite Field Near Melbourne: The Cranbourne Meteorites

The Cranbourne Meteorite Field: An Epic Geological Journey

The Cranbourne meteorite field in Victoria, Australia, represents one of the world’s most remarkable meteorite showers. Thirteen massive iron meteorite fragments have been recovered southeast of Melbourne, making Cranbourne the second-largest meteorite find in Australia (after Mundrabilla). These iron masses are classified as coarse octahedrite iron meteorites of the IAB main group and their story weaves together Indigenous lore, chance discoveries by farmers and cutting-edge mineralogical research.

Early Encounters and Indigenous Lore (1850s)

Long before scientists recognized their extraterrestrial origin, the great Cranbourne iron masses were local curiosities. According to oral histories, members of the Bunurong Aboriginal people knew of at least one large iron “rock” on the plains. They would dance around it, striking it with stone tomahawks to hear its ringing metallic sound. European settlers also came across these strange iron boulders. In the early 1850s, a cattle grazier named McKay encountered the largest of the masses (later named Cranbourne No. 1) protruding from the ground on his property. The exact year of discovery is a bit obscure, but official records place the find in 1853. At the time, McKay and others assumed the iron lump was a natural outcrop of terrestrial iron.

Recognition of a Meteorite Marvel (1860–1861)

By the end of the 1850s, reports emerged of a second large iron block about 6 kilometers from McKay’s property. In 1860, Melbourne’s town clerk, Edmund Gerald FitzGibbon – an amateur geologist – investigated these reports. FitzGibbon visited both the original site and the newly noted iron mass. He found two distinct buried iron boulders, which were duly excavated. To everyone’s astonishment, these were not mere iron ore outcrops but meteorites – remnants of a meteor shower that had peppered the region in ages past. Thus, in 1860 the iron “stumps” were finally recognized as meteorites and designated Cranbourne No. 1 and Cranbourne No. 2. (Their initial discoveries date back to 1853, but it took seven years for their meteoritic nature to be confirmed.)

Cranbourne No. 1 and No. 2 are true giants. No. 1 weighed around 3,550 kg, and No. 2 about 1,525 kg. For context, Cranbourne No. 1 (nicknamed the **“Bruce” meteorite after a local landowner) was the largest iron meteorite known in the world at the time of its discovery. Cranbourne No. 2 (the **“Abel” meteorite, after discoverer A. T. Abel) was not far behind. News of these colossal irons spread quickly in scientific circles.

The Lost “Kitchen Hob”: Cranbourne No. 3

Amid the excitement of 1860, a smaller but intriguing third meteorite came to light. Cranbourne No. 3 was a modest iron fragment compared to its gigantic siblings – originally about 6.8 kg. A farmhand had actually unearthed this piece a few years earlier in 1857 on the same property as Cranbourne No. 1. Unaware of its significance, the farmer had repurposed the dense iron chunk as a kitchen hob (a support in a wood-fired stove). In the process, the meteorite was broken: roughly half (some 3.2 kg) remained in use, while the other half was discarded and lost. When scientists realized in 1860 that this iron hob was meteoritic, the remaining piece of Cranbourne No. 3 was sent off for analysis – only to vanish in transit. Tragically, the last 3.2 kg of Cranbourne No. 3 was lost in 1860 before it could be studied. To this day, Cranbourne No. 3 survives only in historical records.

Strewn Across the Plains: New Finds (1870s–1920s)

Discovery of additional Cranbourne meteorites resumed in the late 19th century. Each find was serendipitous – none were the result of planned searches, but rather chance encounters during farming, construction, or land clearing. A total of nine more pieces (Cranbourne Nos. 4 through 12) were recovered between 1876 and 1928, painting a picture of a wide meteoritic strewn field.

• 1876 – Cranbourne No. 9 (Beaconsfield Iron): Workers cutting a railway line unearthed a 74.9 kg iron meteorite near Beaconsfield. Not recognizing its true value, they allowed a German mineral dealer to acquire it. Sadly, this dealer saw the iron more as a commodity than a scientific specimen – he cut the 75 kg meteorite into many small pieces and sold them off. Today, Cranbourne No. 9 is listed as “probably widely distributed,” existing only as scattered slices in collections around the world.
• 1886 – Cranbourne No. 10 (Langwarrin Iron): A hefty 915 kg iron was discovered by a farmer ploughing his field near Langwarrin (around 8 km southeast of the Langwarrin railway station). The farmer, a man named Padley, initially mistook the meteorite for a mere boulder and rolled it aside to continue ploughing. A government geologist later recognized the iron’s extraterrestrial nature and urged that it be sent to the museum. The Langwarrin meteorite remained on the finder’s property for decades until it was finally sold in 1938 to the U.S. National Museum in Washington, D.C. (now the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History), where it resides today.
• 1903 – Cranbourne No. 11 (Pearcedale Iron): Discovered just below the surface on a farm near Pearcedale, this iron mass weighed 762 kg. The finder did not report it to authorities; instead, he kept the meteorite on his property in secret for over 30 years. In 1938, the Pearcedale meteorite was quietly sold and ended up in the Smithsonian collections alongside the Langwarrin iron. Both #10 and #11 thus became part of American museum holdings.
• 1923 – The Devon Meadows Cluster (Cranbourne Nos. 4, 5, 7, 8): In a remarkable stroke of luck, four meteorites were found in 1923 in a single paddock near Devon Meadows, not far from the Cranbourne No. 1 site. Local farmers, ploughing their fields, turned up one iron after another. The largest of this cluster, Cranbourne No. 4, weighed 1,270 kg, nearly as massive as Cranbourne No. 2. The others – No. 5 (356 kg), No. 7 (153 kg), and No. 8 (23.6 kg) – were smaller but still significant. All four were buried only shallowly, just beneath the soil, suggesting they had been resting undisturbed since the ancient fall. The 1923 finds electrified researchers, as such a concentration of meteorites provided clues about how the meteorite shower may have broken apart (discussed in the next section). Today these pieces are held in various Melbourne collections, including Museums Victoria (which holds No. 4) and the Geological Survey and University of Melbourne (which hold others).
• 1928 – Cranbourne No. 6 (Pakenham Iron): The last of the early Cranbourne meteorites was uncovered during roadworks in 1928. While widening the Princes Highway near Pakenham (about 50 km east of Cranbourne), workers dug up a 40.5 kg iron meteorite from roughly the first meter of soil. Designated Cranbourne No. 6, the Pakenham meteorite was given to the Victorian Geological Survey Museum in Melbourne, where it remains on exhibit.

By 1930, a dozen meteorite fragments had been found in the Cranbourne area. Remarkably, all these discoveries were by chance. No systematic scientific search was ever conducted in the district. Yet the accidental finds had been thoroughly documented by diligent geologists of the era. Thanks to their detailed field notes, we know not only the weights and dates but also the precise locations of each recovery. Such careful records would later allow geoscientists to analyze the spatial distribution of the meteorites and hypothesize about the break-up of the original meteoroid.

Fragmentation Theory: Four Falls or One?

What kind of cosmic event produced the Cranbourne shower? The scattered find sites offer tantalizing hints. The Cranbourne meteorite field likely fell during the Late Pleistocene, possibly 4,000–20,000 years ago so indigenous Australians could’ve and probably did witness it.

So at this point you might be thinking, why didn’t it leave behind any craters?

The Cranbourne meteorites did not leave visible craters because the meteoroid broke apart high in the atmosphere, causing the fragments to slow significantly before reaching the ground. By the time they landed, their speed had dropped to terminal velocity—far below the threshold needed to create impact craters. The shallow, oblique angle of entry further extended their atmospheric flight path, allowing more time for deceleration.

A Modern Addition: Cranbourne No. 13 (2008)

For decades, the Cranbourne meteorite tally stood at twelve known fragments. Then, in 2008, the story gained an exciting new chapter. In a market garden near Clyde (close to the locale of Cranbourne No. 2’s discovery), a farmer unearthed a very heavy, rusty rock and set it aside. He was initially inclined to dispose of the cumbersome boulder, even rolling it into a rubbish skip. Fortunately, a curious friend noticed the object’s unusual heft and metallic character and urged him to have it tested. When geologists at Museums Victoria examined a cut sample, they confirmed the unbelievable: this was indeed another piece of the Cranbourne iron meteorite shower.

Designated Cranbourne No. 13, the new fragment weighs about 85 kg. Its discovery – more than 80 years after the last known piece – underscores the possibility that further meteorites from the original fall could still lie hidden. Cranbourne-13’s owner decided against selling the valuable find; instead, he offered to donate it to the Melbourne Museum on the condition that it remain in the City of Casey on long-term display.

Catalogue of the Cranbourne Meteorites

To recap, the table below summarizes the 13 known Cranbourne meteorite fragments, with their discovery dates, masses, and current dispositions. The first 12 are drawn from the City of Casey’s official records, and the 13th is the modern find from 2008.

Table: The known Cranbourne meteorite fragments. “Year Found” refers to the date of discovery by locals; ID’d = year recognized/identified as a meteorite. Masses and locations from historical records and museum data.

What Are the Cranbourne Meteorites? (Composition and Structure)

Over the eons spent buried in Earth’s soil, the Cranbourne irons have weathered and oxidized on their surfaces. A crust of brownish-black limonite (iron oxide-hydroxide) commonly coats the meteorites. Within this weathering rind, one can find secondary minerals: for example, trevorite (a nickel iron oxide) and, notably, trace amounts of iron and nickel chlorides forming greenish encrustations. These chlorides are products of the reaction between meteoritic metal and salts in the ground water. In fact, very recently a rare new mineral was identified on corroded Cranbourne meteorite fragments: muonionalustaite MOO-oh-nee-oh-nuh-LOOS-tite. Muonionalustaite is a hydrated nickel hydroxychloride, a mineral first described in 2021 from a Swedish meteorite and only the third occurrence of its kind worldwide. Museums Victoria scientists discovered tiny green patches of muonionalustaite on the rusty exterior of Cranbourne pieces and confirmed the mineral in 2024.

Cultural Legacy and Scientific Significance

Today, Cranbourne meteorite specimens are exhibited in major museums on three continents – from London’s Natural History Museum to the Smithsonian in Washington D.C., to Melbourne Museum – as well as in local displays in the City of Casey. Modern researchers continue to study Cranbourne samples to glean insights into metallography, mineralogy, and planetary science. And community interest remains strong, as evidenced by the excitement around the discovery of Cranbourne No. 13 in 2008 and its exhibition to schoolchildren.

The Cranbourne meteorite field tells a story that weaves together science, culture, and curiosity. From the strange iron “stump” that once echoed under Aboriginal dances to the recent discovery of a rare mineral forming on its rusted surface, these ancient space rocks have long captured our imagination. Who knows just how many pieces still lie hidden beneath the suburbs in this region. And who knows just how many pieces have been discarded over the past century and a half, where they probably now sit buried in landfill.

Here's the video we made on this topic on the OzGeology YouTube Channel: