26 
THE CRANBOURNE METEORITES 
The Cranbourne No. 5 (Plate IV, Fig. 1) weighs 7 cwt. (not 
6 cwt. as stated by Hodge Smith, 1939), and is now housed at the 
Victorian Mines Department drill store. When found it measured 
27 in. x 18 in. x 18 in. As a result of scaling, its present dimensions 
are 24 in. x 18 in. x 15 in. 
The Cranbourne No. 7 iron when found weighed about 3 cwt. 
and measured 22 in. x 13 in. x 12 in. It was donated by the 
Director of the Geological Survey to the Geology Department of 
the University of Melbourne in May, 1941. It has scaled badly, 
despite painting with aeroplane cement, and is now reduced to 
16 in. x 12 in. x 9 in. (May, 1943). A piece weighing 3 lb. is in 
the Australian Museum, Sydney ; this is recorded by Hodge Smith 
(1939) as a piece of Cranbourne No. 5, but it is a portion of 
Cranbourne No. 7. Cranbourne No. 5 has not been previously 
cut or drilled. 
The Cranbourne No. 8 iron weighed 52 lb. when unearthed. A 
piece was sawn off for analysis and examination at the Victorian 
Mines Department, and the main mass, now weighing 46 lb., is 
preserved in kerosene at the Geological Survey Museum, together 
with a small etched piece (Plate IV, Fig. 3) weighing 2 lb. Its 
original size was about 8 5 in x 7 5 in. x 6 in. 
As shown in Fig. 1, the four irons found in 1923 all lay close 
to the site of the Cranbourne No. 1 iron, three of them occurring 
close together in one paddock. The Pakenham iron, found in 
1928, lay about 10 miles to the north-west of this group, close to 
the site of the Beaconsfield meteorite. With the exception of the 
Pakenham iron, all the sites lie on a straight line joining the 
Langwarrin and Beaconsfield sites, which are 13 miles apart. In 
view of Madigan’s (1940) conclusion that the smaller members 
of a meteorite shower lag behind the larger, it would appear 
that the meteorite was moving south-westwards, since the smaller 
masses have been found in the north-east and the larger in the 
south-west. 
Texture and Composition 
Widmanstatten Structures 
The four new Cranbourne meteorites, like the earlier described 
irons from this district, show coarse Widmanstatten structures 
(Plate IV, Figs. 2 and 3), and fall into Prior’s category Og, 
i.e., coarse octahedrites (Prior, 1920). The bands of a-iron 
(kamacite) are from 1 mm. to 10 mm. wide, averaging about 4 
