Richard Tambling - author of Australia's 2nd UFO book & UFO contactee

Australia's second UFO book, "Flying Saucers - Where do they come from?", emerged during 1967.  Its author, Sydney Sales Manager and former Royal Air Force photographer, Richard Tambling,  had several UFO sightings of his own.  

                                             Richard Tambling on ABC's "This Day Tonight"         

9 December 1967 with Paul Bennett

(via ABC Retro)

Here is a link to the 1967 interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuaI9LaR5m4&t=10s

Richard Tambling in 1978

Tambling had his first UFO sightings in Hong Kong during 1954.  His 1967 book gave an account of these sightings:

While Tambling's book covered some of the better recent local sightings,  it was Tambling's infatuation with contactee photos (particularly those of Dan Fry and Paul Villa) that set the tone and with hindsight revealed his calling.  As an Air Force photographer Tambling should have been a bit more critical, but subsequently all pretence was put aside.  

Tambling was a full blown contactee.  His space visitors came from Uranus no less.  A 400 year old alien named Namoi revealed to Tambling and his followers that catastrophe was at hand.  Tambling's journey into the world of contactees ostensibly began in 1967, the year his book appeared.  A slightly revised edition of his book appeared in 1978, but his contactee background remained unstated, despite having appeared on a television programme during August, 1977, describing his contacts with Naomi.  

I interviewed him at length at that time and confirmed a classic story of a contactee nature with elements of doomsday prophecy.  I was quoted anonymously in an article on the "Flying saucer syndrome" as saying that Tambling had seemingly learnt from experience not to get too specific about dating of the planetary catastrophe.   "Although he doesn't like to admit it, Tambling predicted several years ago that a `last wave' was going to swamp Sydney within a few months.  Of course he was wrong,  but in a subsequent interview he gave the impression that he felt his actions within the contactee group were pivotally significant in preventing the `wave' from occurring.  This is typical of the saucer sects:  instead of falling apart when their prophecies fail,  they come back even stronger because they believe they've saved the world." 

The last sighting I had of Richard Tambling was when I dropped into a McDonalds at Lane Cove during the late 1970s.  There he was with his wife.  We caught eye contact and I thought he recognised me, but I didn't get the impression he wanted to engage in conversation, so I didn't.  Later I heard he had moved to the Central coast of New South Wales.  Since then I've heard nothing of Richard Tambling, flying saucer book author and UFO contactee.