FALL OF METEORS

Grey River Argus, 19 May 1943, Page 6

FALL OF METEORS

SEEN BY AUSTRALIA NFARMER. SYDNEY, May 7. Mr H. D. Stokes, of Forest Vale, near Condobolin, western New South Wales, has joined a select band of Australians who have seen meteors fall. He considers they fell too close to be comfortable. The story is told by Mr T. Hodgee Smith of the Australian Museum, Sydney, in the current issue of the “Australian Journal of Science.” Mr Stokes was reswinging a gate in his boundary fence at 3 p.m. that day, when from a clear sky he was surprised to hear what he took to be a clap of thunder, followed by a sound like that of an aeroplane. Then he heard a whizz, a thump, and saw a small cloud of smoke nine and a-half chains away. Four other thumps and clouds of smoke followed. For a moment he believed bombs were falling, but then he realised that what had fallen were meteoric fragments. Mr Stokes finished swinging the gate and then went to the place where he had seen the first puff of smoke. He found a meteoric stone weighing 23 lb. It was just visible and had made a hole a foot deep. Later he found four more pieces. They were obviously bits of one another. The pieces weighed a total of 59 lb. Next day a neighbour, Mr F. W. Bahr, found another stone, weighing about 4 lb., 12 chains from Mr Stokes’s gate. The stones are made up of nickeliron (20 per cent, by weight), olivine, and enstatite. These Forest Vale stones are the eighth record of a meteorite actually seen to fall in Australia, and the second in which more than one stone has been recovered. In 1879 there was a rain of meteors at Tenham, in Queensland, from which 230 stones have been preserved.