The first meteorite discovered in the Cranbourne region was in 1853. The first time they came to the public notice was in 1854 at the Melbourne Exhibition when a horseshoe was exhibited made from a specimen of iron from Western Port. This iron turned out to have come from the Cranbourne No. 1 meteorite. Read more
The earliest well-documented recoveries of meteorites in Australia were two large masses of iron weighing 3.5 and 1.5 tons found in 1854 near Cranbourne in Victoria. An even earlier discovery may have been the Barratta stony meteorite, reported to have been found in 1845 in Townsend County, New South Wales (Liversidge, 1872), but Mason (1974) suggests that the evidence concerning the date of find is not conclusive. The description of the Cranbourne meteorites by Haidinger (1861) effectively marked the beginning of research on Australian meteorites. Read more (PDF)
Is it credible that such a mass of solid iron can have been ejected from an active volcano? Is it not rather to be presumed that, discovered, as it is said to have been, in the neighbourhood of the Dandenong-road, that the iron in question has escaped from a crevice of a volcano
A road party at work on the Dandenong road about twenty miles from Melbourne were about mid-day startled by a loud rushing noise, and looking in the direction of the sound they saw what appeared to be a large ball of fire falling to the earth with great velocity ; it struck the ground about half a mile from where they stood. When the men proceeded to the spot, they found a hissing red-hot mass embedded about 16ft. deep in the solid earth. It was several days before it was sufficiently cool to be worked at ; the gentleman in charge of the road party then got it out and sent it to the Melbourne University. It was found to be a mass of nearly pure iron about six tons in weight, and required two teams of bullocks to haul it to Melbourne. Read more