Chapter Thirteen
UFO Mysteries of
New South Wales.
On the night of September 13th 1954, a strange light resembling an electric light globe was seen in the sky over Sydney at an apparent altitude of 12,000ft. In one instance it was kept under observation for 30 minutes by a group of people until it vanished in the west over the Blue Mountains. One eyewitness described it as being “as large as ten stars”.
During 1952 there were several UFO sightings in the night sky over the Fairfield/Lansvale/Cabramatta/Liverpool area. These sightings occurred between January and March. The author, then 9 years old, recalls one night on our Lansvale farm, being shown by my parents high in the sky moving from north to south a mystery light. When it reached a point roughly above Liverpool [to our west] it suddenly “switched off”.
I also recall a night in January 1957, when while walking down a Cabramatta street after visiting a relative with my parents, we together with other people gathered in the street, observed a bright, silver-glowing object, zooming overhead from north to south, emitting silvery sparks as it went, barely a few hundred feet above the town.
These old reports show that the Sydney district has a long history of [recorded] UFO visitations. Yet how many have gone unrecorded in the past? There are vague accounts that suggest 19th century pioneers may have seen, but not understood, many mystery ‘moving’ lights in the night sky.
During the big ‘flap’ year of 1965, the author was kept busy gathering reports from not only the Sydney-Blue Mountains region, but also over a wide area of Australia, and new South Wales in particular. In Sydney I received the report of R.J. Morrison, who with H. Richardson and G. Paston on the night of March 6th 1965, watched a formation of eight yellow, silent lights trailing sparks, travelling at many times the speed of sound.
Later that year there were three more night time UFO incidents in Sydney; the first, on July 10th when Mr D. Crowe spotted a green, glowing disc, at least 20ft in diameter, and about 9ft in height, emitting a yellowish glow underneath, resting on an isolated beach. As he watched, the craft rose swiftly from the sand, and with a swishing noise flew off out to sea.
Then, on August 23rd, two other men, F. Penman and G Patston, saw a flare-like cluster of lights, changing from white to red as the object flew over the city. They watched it for 20 minutes until it flew out of sight. And in the suburb of Pymble on the evening of August 24th, Mr C. Relph observed a pulsating brilliant white ball with a ‘tail’, sitting stationary in the sky overhead. It remained there for an hour before moving off in a zigzag motion.
While the “Tully saucer nests” were still creating newspaper headlines on February 14th 1966, in the Sydney suburb of Bankstown, two high school boys, Robert Denis and Larry Stewart, stumbled upon a UFO ‘nest’ in a swamp one mile east of Bankstown Airport. The ‘nest’ was a perfectly circular formation, 19ft 6 inches in diameter, of flattened reeds that had been pressed into the muddy ground in a clock-wise direction. The reeds were bent at the base and not broken, as UFO investigators who soon inspected the site discovered.
In the words of the students: “When we first found the ‘nest’, we noticed a particular pungent chemical smell, which seemed to hang in the air. It was not like the usual musty swamp smell, and furthermore, when we went back the next day the smell was gone”. Being so close to the airport, there was some speculation that the ‘nest’ was a hoax, and besides there was a busy highway nearby. Why had the landing UFO not been seen by airport personnel or passing motorists? On the other hand, if the UFO responsible had landed some time after the airport’s closure late at night, say 2-3am when vehicles would have been few on the highway, then it is possible that a landing took place at that time. If so, the craft would not have remained there for very long before taking off again.
Northern NSW shares a great many UFO reports with southern Queensland, which is understandable, seeing that mystery objects move back and forth over the border country.
At Burleigh Heads in mid-1973, a bright white light was seen one night moving high over the town, having already been spotted by a great many people along the Gold Coast just inside the Queensland boarder. The object came to a halt, and remained stationary for some minutes, during which time hundreds of people saw it.
At Goonumbla, in the northwestern NSW border country, on July 31st 1965, Mr J.J. McClintock and his family watched a glowing object in the night sky, as it descended close enough to the ground for their farm dogs and cattle to panic. They observed the craft to have three leg-like protrusions beneath it before it changed direction and flew off.
Then in September that year there were several sightings of mystery objects over a wide area of the state’s north. At Tenterfield on 8th September Mr and Mrs L. & M. Ross, J. McColl and M. Nuggent observed in the night sky over the town an erratic, blurred object emitting a green, red and white light with aerial-like structures on top. They watched it with binoculars as it moved on out of sight.
Following this sighting, on the 10th September at Lismore Mr D.R. Stewart sighted a number of bright lights travelling across the sky at ten minute intervals.
At Boggabri, northwest of Tamworth on September 13th, C.J. Willis spotted a silent, cigar-shaped craft with a space capsule like front and a 30ft length vapour trail, travelling at jet-like speed.Mandurah was the scene on 18th November, of another strange aerial craft report. This town, lying between Dubbo and Tamworth, is situated amid a vast, isolated region of scattered farms, and like the rest of the northwestern districts hereabouts, has a long history of UFO activity. Mr. M. Christiansen and R. Fletcher observed the strange craft hovering high in the sky over the town in broad daylight for several hours before it move off. They described it as cylindrical in shape, silvery in colour and with a “dark patch on top”.