Australia's Little Space Travellers

Don McColl has been involved with Australian meteorites and tektites for over fifty years. His early graduate years were in the early sixties, when he was studying at Melbourne University, and spent time in the company of George Baker whose work on the tektites of Australia was monumental.  It is difficult to believe now how much controversy there was at that time, about the nature and origin of the superbly shaped Australian tektites.  George Baker never had any doubts, but then he did have the advantage of having the finest shaped tektites in the world virtually at his doorstep.  During the author’s working life, which included curating for three different national museums, he continued to take a special interest in these remarkable specimens.  In recent retirement years, he and his wife Lois have amused themselves finding a large number of stony and iron meteorites, plus great numbers of the flight textured tektites, in all kinds of country, along the tracts of inland Australia where the tektites fell in such abundance so long ago.  In 2011 together with Svend Buhl of Hamburg, he produced the recent book, “Henbury Craters and Meteorites, their Discovery, History and Study”, and it seemed logical to follow this with something about the tektites.

• Introduction and History.- Theories of Tektite Origin.- The True Origin of the Australian Tektites.- Where are Tektites Found in Australia?.- Primary Shapes of the Australian Tektites.- Flight Shaping of Australian Tektites.- The Classical Flanged Buttons.- Elongate Flanged Forms.- Miniature Flanged Forms.- Microtektites.-Hollow tektites.- Asymmetric Flanged Form.-s Fragmentation of Flanged Forms.- References.