The Harry Turner 1971 JIO document - a reality check

The Harry Turner 1971 JIO document - a reality check

Unpacking the 1971 Australian JIO UFO Document with Bill Chalker

(Extensive documents & illustrations will be added next week, so return to this post for further details)

Here I have created an edited version of a podcast interview I did with Melbourne based Grant Lavac on his excellent show - The Unexplained Rundown. On his show you get a regular update on UFO UAP matters with a strong Australian focus. Excellent stuff and I recommend you check it out and subscribe.

The Harry Turner circa 1971 Joint Intelligence Organisation (JIO) UFO document represents an excellent review of the clandestine and hidden side of military intelligence and aerospace interest in UFOs.  The document has been somewhat misinterpreted, and even described as explicit evidence of the "legacy" (UFO crash retrieval) program.  I have felt that a clearer picture of the document should be offered to respond to these misrepresentations and misunderstanding. Beyond that, it is an incredibly important document revealing an extraordinary insight into a shadowy world few of us get to see and understand. I was lucky to be able to get to know Harry Turner before he passed, and I received much of his personal files.

Harry Turner & Bill Chalker

I recommend you examine the material I have written about Harry Turner and his legacy:

https://theozfiles.blogspot.com/search?q=%22Harry+Turner%22

Here is the link to Grant Lavac’s The Unexplained Rundown interview with me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD2Is-PjMhI&t=50s

What follows is my edited transcript of the above interview:

Grant Lavac:

In this episode of The Unexplained Rundown, we talk with veteran Australian UFO researcher Bill Chalker about the 1971 Australian Joint Intelligence Organisation minute paper on UFOs...and its author, Harry Turner. This document has been publicly referenced on numerous occasions by David Grusch, Karl Nell, Jesse Michels, and Eric Weinstein. It was even included in the third tranche of released UFO files by the US Department of Defense. But the broader context around the genesis of this document - and the hard source material its author, Harry Turner, relied on - has rarely been discussed in public. Bill has comprehensively reported on Harry Turner’s work and interviewed him at length before his passing. If there is anyone better positioned to opine on Turner's minute paper and provide this crucial historical context...it's Bill. 

Friends, welcome back to another episode of the unexplained rundown. I'm your host, Grant Lavac. 

I've been wanting to have a chat with this gentleman, get him back on the podcast for quite a while. I think it's been almost three years since I had a good chat with Bill on the podcast. So tonight we are talking about the 1971 Joint Intelligence Organization Minute Paper, the document on UFOs that's been referenced quite a bit frequently, certainly recently by David Grush, by others, Jesse Michaels, Eric Weinstein, Karl Nell.  It has certainly been doing the rounds … quite a bit as of late and it's not a new document. It's been around for quite some time … and there's no one better positioned to unpack this document for us and provide some context, some good background information, maybe highlight some of the misconceptions around this document. 

So, no one better than Bill Chalker to break it all down for us. And if you're living under a rock and you have not heard of Bill Chalker before, allow me to give you a brief introduction.

So, Bill is one of Australia's, if not the world's leading UFO researchers, also a field investigator based in Sydney. Is widely recognized for his scientific approach to anomalous phenomena, blending his background in chemistry with rigorous archival and forensic investigation. He has also authored countless articles, one in particular for New Dawn magazine. He did a great article, a couple years back, on Harry Turner - part of the subject matter that we're covering this evening.

Obviously he has also authored an incredibly comprehensive chapter on the Australian military and the official government response in a book titled UFOs and government, a Historical Inquiry. I haven't read the book. I've read Bill's chapter on it. Fascinating.  Actuallynow keen to get my hands on the book and read it to to see what else has been happening over the decades in other parts of the world with respect to this this topic. Bill has also authored a number of books including the Oz Files which I think is a rarity these days. So, you might find a copy on Amazon for a hefty fee being a collector's item. Now, he's also authored Hair of the Alien and UFO History Keys. And if you haven't checked out Bill's blog, The Oz Files, I've put the link in the description below. You can check it out. Specifically, all of the blog articles that Bill has done on Harry Turner. So you can just click on the link and it will take you to all of the articles that he's done on Harry Turner who's obviously heavily featured in the discussion this evening.

So I would just certainly encourage you to have a look at the the blog. Some great great articles and some great historical information on the topic and an absolute wealth of information. So like I said, it's been almost three years since we had Bill on the podcast. So, it's a true pleasure to welcome him back to the show.

And obviously, we are talking tonight about Harry Turner's 1971 Joint Intelligence Organization Minute Paper. That's Harry in his heyday. And you had the good fortune of meeting Harry and talking with him comprehensively before his passing. So perhaps for before we get into it specifically his document, perhaps you can provide for the benefit of the audience that's not really aware of Harry's work and … how you came to know of him and eventually sit down with him and talk with him. Can you give us a bit of a breakdown on on Harry briefly and and how you came into contact with him? 

Yes, between 1982 and 84 over about four different visits, I spent quite a bit of time going to Canberra and looking at the Defence UFO files, mainly RAAF files at the time. And I was interested in trying to get a continuity of files and cover it all from at least the 50s right through to the 1980s and one name in particular came up both in the early 1950s and then later in the late 60s early 70s and that was Harry Turner and turns out he was in a couple of different roles over that period from the 1950s. He ended up during World War II, because of wartime and his familiarity and training, in early radar, which they called at that time radio location. He had a rapid run through a university degree PhD in terms of what was regarded as the Bailey's school of military applications of radar - early radar and it became quite famous that that school there's a photo that shows Harry sitting down with one of mainly Air Force people, a number of army people, what was all designed to give a crash course in radio location, that kind of thing, and radar. So he had quite a extensive knowledge on radar and that comes in good stead when later on he starts to look at some of the the RAAF UFO files and the one case that attracted his attention was the radar visual case over Woomera that occurred in 1954 - quite a spectacular case and so that's essentially how I encountered him, just by seeing his name in the files to begin with. I then wrote off to Air Force Intelligence, ASIO and a few other parties, Joint intelligence organization, trying to locate the whereabouts of Harry Turner. And after a while I get this handwritten letter back from Harry, or actually initially I got a letter from his former boss Bob Mathams, who was essentially head of what was called the DSTI within JIB. That's the director of scientific and technical intelligence of the JIB which became the JIO and subsequently now it's sort of pretty much within the umbrella of the Defence Intelligence organization.

You always get a lot of acronyms in this game and so many it's unbelievable. But essentially I was looking at him from the time when he was liaising with DAFI which stands for directorate of air force intelligence and until in latter days got access to the files in his position when he was with with the joint intelligence bureau JIO.  But in the early days back in the 1950s, he had established, I think a three-pronged approach to looking at flying saucers and there was a huge UFO wave. One of the biggest UFO waves in Australia and indeed in other parts of the world was during 1954. But he was also looking at it from as early as 1948. And so he was quite well-versed with the subject. But most of it was private interest and he was sort of at the stage of when he made contact with the Royal Australian Force (RAAF) Department of Defence, he was at Melbourne University in their physics department and he was also conducting inquiries with the local civilian group that existed at that time in 1954. Now this wasn't the Victorian Flying Saucer Society Research Society, and it was essentially a organization called the Victorian Flying Saucer Investigation Committee. There were a few members of that group that went on to become members of VFSRS in latter days. Now VUFORS, unfortunately is now pretty much non-existent although I think there were obviously some historical presence with it and it was quite a well-established group. So Harry was doing his own inquiries, doing inquiries through the Victorian Flying Source Investigation Committee and also reached out to Air Force Intelligence, but he he had already had a pretty high security clearance, particularly with his work with radio location during the Second World War. 

So, his timing to contact others couldn't have been better, because basically, Air Force intelligence was being hauled over the coals to come up with some answers as to what the bloody hell was with all these flying saucer reports that were inundating particularly Victoria at the time and other places in Australia, but mainly it was mainly a Victorian centred wave during 1954 except the classic radar visual case didn't come into any prominence with him until much later. This is the case of Seamus Farrell, the Sea Fury pilot from Nowra Naval Station that occurred actually in late August of 1954. But the minister of the day really didn't get any intensive kind of interrogation by the the media until December 1954. So there's a lot of accounts around on the web you'll find that will date the Sea Fury case as occurring in December 1954 but it actually occurred at the end of August 1954 and that got quite a detailed response. It was also the subject, as it turned out, a subject of the Joint Intelligence Bureau which was only more or less just established and the first scientific analyst was a chap by the name of Bob Mathams or Robert Mathams and he's the one that I actually corresponded with during the early 1980s and he had become later Harry Turner's direct boss in the Joint Intelligence Bureau, Joint Intelligence Organization. He mentioned to me that they never really determined what they would do with reports of UFOs if they confirmed that they are extraterrestrial. They were targeting UFO flying saucer type cases that might have been Russian hardware, Chinese hardware (or not really Chinese hardware - a bit early for them) but mainly foreign adversarial type hardware and that's what they're interested in and he said we hadn't really defined a policy.  So it's it's surprising that in some ways that they had that interest early on.  But because Bob Mathams was the only scientific analyst that they had back at that time in about 1956-57 they just didn't have the resources.

He did it for about a year then sort of opted out I think for personal reasons then came back into it and then became the head of DSTI, the director of scientific and technical intelligence and they started to get more and more analysts and then, but the problem with Harry was that because of his coursework and stuff like that and his university degree that he also got in WA and also the supplementary radio-location degrees and all that kind of stuff at Sydney Sydney University, he was regarded as a hell of an asset, particularly on the nuclear side of things. 

So that's when they they shipped him off to Harwell in Britain to be of some assistance in terms of the Maralinga situation when the Brits got permission, helpfully from our prime minister of the day Robert Menzies, to let off a whole bunch of atomic bombs on Australian soil. You know, really impressive work that, but not something that anybody alive at that time would have appreciated really, but no, it was a different time - everybody wanted to support the British government, all that kind of thing, and so it was kind of follow the Brits you know, follow the mother country, that kind of thing …. So Menzies said sure you can let off atomic bombs in the middle of Australia if you like and and we've got also Montebello off the Western Australian coast. That was the first of them in 1952. And so there was a lot of certainly nuclear activity going on in Australia. And it's striking that there was in 1952 also a major UFO flap year in various locations including South Australia and Queensland and New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia.

There were reports coming from all around the country essentially, but but not in huge numbers. But the really big wave as I mentioned earlier was 1954 – a very big wave. But for Harry the timing was right and they (DAFI) welcomed him with open arms. Well, he made the overture first. He wanted to see, you know, what do they have, about their files? And they were somewhat pleased to have him making that inquiry because they they were being hauled over the coals to come up with some answers about flying saucers. And so they vetted him, confirmed that he security clearance and then they wanted to give him a car and everything to assist in investigations and wanted him to review the existing files that they had. He decided he wanted to be independent at that point in time. And so he declined the use of the car, that kind of thing. But they did share the files with him and he started doing this detailed analysis of the DAFI files. The one case that he really focused on big time up to that point and we're talking essentially June July of 1954, so the Sea Fury case from Nowra hadn't occurred, but one of the cases that had occurred was the case over Woomera and that was a pretty impressive case. 

And so was it Harry had reached out to you as a result of your inquiries and is that how you developed some back and forth correspondence?

Yes … it was just a short written letter from Harry. He had retired by then and had moved up to near the north coast NSW/Queensland border… I think I think he was kind of pleased that I made contact with him. We had numerous phone conversations and all that kind of stuff and exchanges on that basis. But then finally meeting him …. we had a chance to have a fairly direct discussion… 

There was a lot of material that Harry had supplied me in these private visits… I essentially got a lot of those original files and a lot of those that material I could see was what made up the actual report that has become the subject of a lot of attention in more recent years.

It was all in a bit of an ad hoc form and what it revealed was that from the time that he joined the joint intelligence bureau and its subsequent reincarnations, he was fairly persistent in trying to get the Joint Intelligence Bureau to examine the flying saucer subject.

But that was not his brief. His job was he was the head of the nuclear science section of the DSTI.

The director of Scientific and Technical Intelligence within the JIB and later the JIO and his boss Bob Mathams was trying to get Harry to get away from flying saucers, you know, get focused. Bob Mathams told me directly and wrote and said, well, I knew I could never dissuade Harry from actually examining flying saucers. So, if the work gets done on the main focus, and that is nuclear intelligence and all that kind of stuff, then fine that he would put up with it.

This figures into the situation with the perspective that a lot of overseas researchers, and some of our own here, are taking on that 1971 document, that it's presented as an official file. Well, it's not.

Well, it is in fact that it exists in the joint intelligence organization file and it's on letterhead.

Yes, that's right. But it it's not an official view. It was never an official view. It was Harry's view.

Yes. Understood.

And he was trying to convince a lot of players to become consistent with that view. And he had a lot of support, very high level support. A number of the different chief of defence scientists were supporters of the whole concept. 

I don't think he ever discussed with me the idea of something like Roswell or crash retrieval cases. He was mainly focused on rapid intervention. The kind of thing that I was trying to advocate as well, like being able to get to a location when there's an actual UFO event on or particularly a physical trace case where there's physical evidence left behind. And he actually got it to a stage where the air force was agreeable up to a point and they were going to allow an aircraft a jet aircraft to be on standby in the event of a close encounter before it occurring and physical traces. That's how far it got. 

That was 1969 when the rapid intervention team was almost put into play and it had people like George Barlow (who was a later deputy head of the DSTI) and also people like (chief Defence scientist) John Farrands and the preceding chief defence scientist … but they were all in and wanted to be involved. But then probably the person that was dragging the chain a bit was the director of air force intelligence. He personally had a hatred of UFOs. He did not want his own people to be examining the UFO subject. And so he did his best to try and downplay the whole UFO subject.  Air Force Intelligence was happy to transfer transfer all the files over to the Joint Intelligence Bureau back in the the late 50s if they wanted it, but they didn't want to get involved with it because they saw it as a kind of a controversial thing that would bring them into the public eye and the JIB and it successors did not want to be in the public eye. 

Right. So it sounds like it was killed because because there was this individual had a bit of a a personal disdain for the topic and was there was a fear of a reputational risk.

It still existed for quite a while. It was going to be coming about it seemed and then there was a major wave in a number of parts of Australia but the one that got Harry drawn into it was the one that occurred in Western Australia mainly around Perth and the Air Force intelligence people within DAFI who were there were were be being besieged by UFO reports and it it occupied about a third of their actual time. And the problem was that there was a lack of support for Air Force intelligence officers. So they even had to drive their own vehicles to investigate flying saucer sightings if they decided to investigate one. And the Perth RAAF people put out a call they had heard that this rapid intervention team was being brought together. It wasn't quite together and so essentially Harry Harry Turner went across in his own right to to Perth to do some investigations and he shared a lot of that investigation with me. 

The key case that interested him the most was at Coverdale near the airport.  There was a radar visual case. Given his background back in the 50s with radar location and radar he he had recommended back in 54 that we should focus on radar cases and physical evidence type cases. But they basically ignored his report in 1954 even though he said that a number of the cases seem to involve possibly extraterrestrial craft. He completed that report on the ship going to England, to go to Harwell for more preparatory work for the the nuclear activity that was going to occur in Australia. There was a lot of pre-planning going on. Montebello was not an ideal location. 

The conclusions in this document, you know, it says if if one assumes that these intelligence reports are authentic, then the evidence presented is such that it is difficult to assume any interpretation other than that unidentified flying objects are being observed.

But unfortunately Harry as a good scientist decided with these findings there he felt there were not enough cases in the DAFI files that were of unknowns and so he wanted to to compare it and do a correlation with a bigger selection of data and he got that mainly from cases that were listed in one of Donald Keyhoe's early books, I think it would have been the “Flying Saucers from outer space” because at the back it had summaries of a lot of interesting unexplained cases from the early days of US Air Force investigation. And Turner recommended that they in fact get in touch with the Americans to confirm the data that Donald Keyhoe had been given to verify its reality. And unfortunately at the time the United States Air Force were caught up in a bit of a conflict with Donald Keyhoe. They were kind of characterising him as a science fiction author and was basically unreliable. That was in fact incorrect that he in fact had been given all these unexplained cases by the media guy with the US Air Force and that would be Albert Chop. He even wrote a letter on the back of of the American edition of the book. So he confirmed it. There was never any doubt that he got these cases from US Air Force and that they were unexplained at the time. Yeah. And so but the problem was the US Air Force were conducting this bit of warfare against Donald Keyhoe and that enabled our own Defence people who contacted the US attaché and our own people in Washington and they came back with the then current interpretation of Donald Keyhoe's work saying it was all false and it was he was not to be trusted and that undermined at the time Harry's 1954 report.  Because he had compared to the US data and so they used that as a convenient way essentially to ignore his recommendations which were to focus on radar cases, that kind of thing. 

What a shame. What a sincere shame. Well, look, let's maybe use that as an opportunity to transition now into the actual 1971 document because it is a fascinating one and it's an important historical document. But what a lot of people may not know those that aren't as maybe well versed on the topic as we are that Harry Turner's 1971 Joint Intelligence Organisation minute paper is actually included in the Department of War's latest third release. If we just jump into it's a CIA listing but its basically dated 1971 Australian Review of the United States Air Force Project Blue Book. This document was released by the National Archives of Australia. Now what's you and I have talked about this Bill, but you know is a bit frustrating or you know a bit eyebrow raising is that if we look at the actual document in detail … They've just lifted it directly out of the National Archives of Australia.

There's no analysis provided by the CIA on that report. 

And one of the things Harry wouldn't talk to me about was stuff that was classified, but he was pretty open with a lot of the stuff. He did say that they were investigating it and there was a focus on anti-gravity and that kind of thing. But I guess he had his hands tied basically in many ways. He he had several trips to the United States meeting with the CIA and all that kind of thing. And as it turned out with the classic 1952 wave, he had only one of his own associates who was based at at Woomera and that was Colonel John Durance who was the commander of the range. Um, and as it turns out, he was visiting the United States during June and July of 1952 and actually was invited in to the radar room on both weekends of the Washington DC radar sightings. 

Wow.

And so Turner had the opportunity to talk to Durance. He said more or less they were just across the table talking to each other about it and he said that Durance was absolutely certain that this was not anything man-made that it was real and it was phenomenal. He thought it was extraordinary and it that was the catalyst I think for a lot of the focus within the US Air Force to start to examine the the concept of anti-gravity. Now Harry's reaction as a physicist was well we need to get our understanding of gravity in order first before we start talking about anti-gravity and so gravity was a problem we don't fully understand it. 

I should explain too that it was Keith Basterfield that got these files out of the government and got them into the National Archives (of Australia) and organized the the digitization and that's the only reason you're able to actually read it by going to the (Australian) archives. All due credit to Keith there. Kudos to Keith. 

You've spoken to the man himself that authored the report, but you've also seen a lot of the supporting other documentation that Harry authored and one of the strategies that Harry used to try and get an interest going at a high level within the JIO was to focus on what could be perceived as weaponry.  

You don't see it in the file that's in the Trump dump. It's essentially a second part which exists in our archives. Where Harry looks at Passport to Magonia Jacque’s catalogue of cases. Now, unfortunately, the British publisher Neville Spearman chose not to include the catalogue of a thousand cases or thereabouts.

But Harry's already got copies of the American edition and in the original American publication, the catalogue is at the back, but it's not in the British edition that we poor Australians would get. We would have had imported ourselves an American copy.

That catalogue was extremely valuable because it highlighted a whole range of data of cases mainly UFO landing cases but also cases where beings were reported in contact with the landing cases and using what appear to be like rods to paralyse people, that kind of thing. And Vallee also included car stop type cases as well. Electromagnetic type car cases.

So I guess Bill the question is what are your thoughts on the characterisation of Harry Turner's document there based on what you've seen?

Yes, the only problem really I have with the characterisation of from those commentators is that that it wasn't a formal government document. It was a collection of material put together in a special folder by the JIB recorded for historical purposes so that they could have a collection of relatively informed material about flying sources.

And the main guy was of course Harry Turner that provided all of that. But the reality in the day was that he wasn't getting much traction with that report when he brought it to the attention of the director of JIB. Well his own boss Bob Mathams and the head of the joint intelligence organisation at the time. None of them were that keen to pursue it simply because they were under resourced. They felt that the United States government had more resources, more money, and that they could do a better job at focusing on it. So, they they took a backseat to it and tended to downplay Harry's report. And so it's it's actually quite surprising given that background of the contemporary problem or the reception that Harry received which was not that positive to have it turning up as an historical document with the JIB and now preserved for everybody to have a look at in the Australian archives.

And so it's I tend to agree with Harry's analysis. Of course, it doesn't get into anything to do with Roswell. It doesn't refer to anything about crash UFOs. It does refer to a crash program, but that crash program is basically military speak to get our our stuff together and start focusing at it in a rapid way, that it was an important problem. And that's the key importance of Turner's document that he was, I think, fairly well focused. He had, I suppose, the advantage of having already examined it in detail back in 1954 and writing an official report which wasn't again well received. So Harry had a lot of time, a lot of difficulty trying to get traction with the Australian government and department of defence to really focus on it. He spent a lot of time even in his role in nuclear science doing UFO work. As I said before, Mathams would would just say, you know, as long as you got the job done, the nuclear science part of it, but he he didn't draw a connection in any significant way other than the fact that he he did confirm to me that yes, there were reports that he had looked at. He didn't personally have any UFO sightings on site. Associates of his did like Rhys Dalton Morgan's grandfather Tom Dalton Morgan… Harry knew him. He knew Richard Durance. So there were a lot of people and and there was also a lot of sightings that had occurred at Woomera and a few at Maralinga as well.

So, I mean for me when I read this document from Harry Turner … but it it kind of comes across that … it was less of a definitive intelligence assessment of US capabilities and more of an internal bureaucratic pitch to try and highlight what the US was doing. These are reasons why we should take this topic seriously. And obviously, you know, the last section says would be it would appear wrong for Australia to remain ignorant of the true situation. We lack an intelligence viewpoint that can assess the nature and possible consequences of the problem. a scientific viewpoint that could derive scientifically valid data from the reports and a public relations viewpoint that can honestly satisfy public interest to overcome these deficiencies in the Australia investigation of UFOs. It would seem that a strong case exists for the acceptance of the RAAF suggestion that another government department assume responsibility for the investigation and analysis of UFO reports. So he was leveraging that open- source intelligence that he had collected to try and pitch and strengthen the business case for there being a comprehensive UFO investigation done in an agency that was resourced and equipped to handle it. 

Even though he spent a lot of time in his role occupying a lot of interest in UFOs, he did maintain obviously the work that was what he was supposed to be doing and that was nuclear science. and he as you say he was trying to use this document to do a pitch for the reorganized defence military intelligence structure which eventually emerged with DSTO and the latter formations of various different aspects of intelligence. The late 60s and early 70s was a time of huge restructuring within military intelligence in Australia. 

And he felt that the the best fit for the flying saucer subject was probably DSTO and he happened to have the support earlier with the rapid invention team that he had the concept back in late ' 69 with people like Dr John Farrands, and Barlow and company. They were actually interested but they did not have the resources. Unfortunately, the Yanks were the ones that had the resources but Turner was highlighting particularly in those last few paragraphs that we should take a separate path. We should be more focused on the physical evidence that it was indeed a reality. He knew, I think he knew, and he more or less implied it to me when we had our discussions that that the Americans were conducting classified investigations after Blue Book had been terminated and even while Blue Book was on there were separate investigations and that obviously the UFO aspect could have inspired this focus on the anti-gravity projects and that's the implication of Harry's report and the significance of it. And so on the same day that Harry authored that report, you have this minute paper, you know, to the deputy secretary, 27th of May 1971 by Furlonger that kind of goes into … the the attitude or you know justification for what they had proposed or what Harry had proposed … the Department of Supply which would become the Defence Science Technology Organization be the ones responsible for handling the UFO problem. 

So what was Harry's involvement in obviously getting this document submitted by Furlonger to deputy secretary?

He was trying to get his superiors to present it to Furlonger. That's a draft. It never got out as a formal (thing). 

I see. Okay. So, because it does say draft submission. Yeah.

Yes. I've got copies of versions of that that are more annotated and with I think Harry's immediate boss and others and I think Furlonger notes, but somebody high up with Joint Intelligence sort of saying you know my views on this and I'm not going to sign this memo right okay so one thing that's obviously just to come back to Harry's 1971 document. 

Obviously, you have the likes of Karl Nell and Eric Weinstein and Jesse Michaels really jump on the the information … 

Yes, of course they would because it actually represents … a very well-informed summary of the situation with a hint and a few directions naming names and organizations and companies to follow the trail … You know that's the importance of the document.

So yes, they're correct in that sense.

But the part that's not right is that it wasn't an officially mandated Australian government report. It was Harry Turner's private opinion formed within his time as the director of nuclear science within the DSTI of the Intelligence Bureau, to strengthen the case for it to be to be taken seriously within Australia and get a a serious inquiry into the whole topic. 

How did Harry know the information about the research that was being conducted in the US regarding gravity and gravity, how did that information come to Harry? Was that as as a result of his time over in … Harwell or was that just open source information he was able to secure? 

Well, he told me the story of when he was at Harwell that he saw the first of the the

notices going up on the Harwell classified notice board for positions, you know, indications of interest to participate in anti-gravity and he like most of the other scientists at Harwell were going, "Yeah, well, we got to get our act together on gravity first before we can really control gravity and fixate on anti-gravity."  You know, he said there was a lot of work to be done. And all he's done there is to basically highlight both public and semi sensitive classified programs. He doesn't outright reveal anything that wasn't known in the public domain. 

Yes, but you'd have to research deeply and have a good understanding of the potential programs that were in play to create this list because the list as Jesse and others have sort of highlighted (was) comprehensive these guys were focusing on the problem. These were all the key players.

 So, it's an excellent summary.

It's an excellent summary, but our own government got back into it about a decade later. So, a decade later and and reassessed the report again because it was being played around with in terms of foreign policy as well.

I think I shared with you some of those other documents.

Yes. Well, let's let's have a look at the the document 10 years later in 1981…

So, where the document that the Department of War put out where that basically ends I think … but it doesn't include the second half, which is focused on the Passport to Magonia Vallee catalogue.

That's right. Yes, Harry Harry takes that catalogue and extracts every one of the cases that he believed showed some sense of weaponry. You know, he also does all the interesting chronologies and all the rest of it I think he did a pretty good job in terms of summarizing the state of play in the United States at that time. So, but I think he was more or less arguing for our own separate path that really focused on the fact that there was a definite UFO reality.

And, you know, for people that haven't read it, it is a fascinating document. It's incredibly comprehensive like you're saying, like Harry's obviously done this in the age where there was no internet … he would have had to have done some serious leg work to compile all of this key information. So it is a very very interesting document and so that kind of brings us to if we have a look at the document which you flagged for me.

(The R.N. Hamilton FAS SIP document (Strategic & International Policy Division) January, 1981 – 1 page)

(The JIO briefing – 12 January 1981)

Oh, this is probably the last bit that's interesting. “The press cutting from People, so People magazine dated 10 December 1980 was the work of freelance journalist John Pinkney, founder of Australia's UFO Research Society. He also had a column or so in such journals as Australasian Post and the recently introduced Omega. You may recall that Omega carried a Brian Toohey article entitled Nuclear Terror, Australia's Secret Role, featuring a double page coloured photograph of Pine Gap. John Pinkney's thesis developed along with other crackpot theories in his book Alien Honeycomb paperback $39 published in June 1980 is the existence of a conspiracy between the Australian and American government, government's RAAF Defence, Pentagon, etc. for a mass cover up of unidentified flying objects. I hope the above meets your requirements.” 

So it's you know that they use the word crackpots … in this this document… You know there's this institutional stigma and one of the questions I put out, they're kind of viewing, I think, there's a sense that some are viewing this topic as certainly fringe a fringe nuisance, that you know it's does, that handicaps the ability of a serious analyst to apply a rigorous metric driven approach to UFO data because most of the data they were getting was very ad hoc and incomplete. 

But the reality was that they just didn't have the funds or the budgets to focus on subjects like flying saucers and UFOs and but there were players, and like the the person you're going to highlight the moment the guy that responds to this, that's George Barlow who I had actually interviewed myself … he said that there would have been some level of serious investigation if they had the funds to do it but basically he's saying we only had funds back in the older days. But really like Arthur Wills, he talks about Arthur Willis (and John Farrands).

The form being used was that the reporting form that was the one Harry Turner designed that form … the three-part proforma reporting form, he wanted to make the the form or the investigation that the RAAF did if they were going to be the ones to keep running the show, he wanted them to do it in a more scientific fashion than they were up to that point as comprehensively data driven as possible. In culling the forms held by RAAF, there remains a small core of reports which are competently reported and cannot be readily ascribed to astronomical objects, artificial satellite re-entry or meteorological optical phenomena. The most interesting of these are those which leave physical evidence which more frequently consist of burnt or flattened vegetation. In more affluent days, DSTO had proposed one or two flying squads equipped with magnetometers, radiation counters, etc. to try to capture some hard core evidence.

Unfortunately, staff ceilings and financial restrictions intervened and that situation still persists … So that's what kind of killed any serious effort to get something up and running. Financial burden, lack of resources and a lack of perhaps interest.

The author is George Barlow and I spoke to him a few years later about this matter and and he pretty much confirmed what he said there.

Right. So if they had a lot more money, it may have become a real possibility.

Ross Thomas FAS SIP, which is international policy for Australia and that kind of thing, commented, "What I have established is a record of quote study studied neglect." In other words, they basically examined the subject, but they more or less ignored it because they just didn't have the money or the focus resources to be able to study the subject. He says, "What the hell do I do?" Subsequently he discussed this with Paul Dibbard … and finally left it with Ross Thomas to raise sometime within Military Space Office.

So that implied that there was the possibility if there was more funding, more resources, it may have come back into the picture again in a more focused way. But essentially given the the limited resources that the Australian government was giving to the whole military intelligence program, it was essentially not something they were going to pursue with any great enthusiasm and they'd leave it up to the Americans. That's the background to it.

Were there any other comments that you wanted to make, Bill, regarding the 1971 or 81 documents that we maybe haven't touched on?

Yes, look, essentially, given the fact that this was generated, while we've still got these kind of non-digital type rapid confirmations, you know, the modern day responses, have a big churn and they were, I think they weren't quite sensitive to the fact that maybe they were going to get subjected to FOI inquiries at a later day. And so to me it seems to be a more honest kind of kind of assessment of the subject from their point of view.

You mentioned John Farrands. 

I actually had spoken to him and I thought I wasn't going to get much of an interest. He was in retirement but he had actually had UFO files with him …  and was planning to write his own book on UFOs.  But then he said I think I'll wait until your book comes out which was later, but I'm saying to him, no, no, you write your book … but unfortunately he passed away I think about a month or so after The OZ Files came out in 1996. Sad to see … what a shame because I'm sure there would have been some valuable info that could have been if Farrands had written his book that he had thought about writing.  It would have been brilliant, a really good thing, because it was Seamus O’Farrell the Sea Fury pilot in the classic radar visual case from 1954 who used to have regular lunches with John Farrands in the canteen at the Russell offices building in Canberra, and he said (to me) basically Farrands knew it all. He knew all about the UFO problem and he wanted to pursue it. And Farrands in fact did confirm that to me. The FASSIP documents confirms that as well through George Barlow.

Rod Barton worked under Harry Turner in the nuclear science section of DSTI in the JIO. Barton authored 2 books, “The Weapons Detective” and “The Life of a Spy”, which mentioned his time with Turner. He made the astonishing claim that Harry was spending up to 90 % of his time in the nuclear science section of the DSTI/JIO studying UFOs and that even just amazed me, and I queried him and then he responds and say hi Bill, I might have been a bit harsh on the amount of time Harry spent on UFOs. Thinking back, I recall a study that he and I made on global nuclear warfare and he was totally committed to that.

Even so, if not 90%, I thought, how's that possible? And he cut it back to 70 to 80%. 

That, so it highlighted the fact that Harry was spending an awful lot of time focusing on UFOs during his time in nuclear science. 

That in itself is a really wonderful story I think, but it was interesting, but basically Harry's age at that time when his immediate boss retired he no longer had the protection of his boss who was sympathetic to Harry and went back to the old days.  Harry retired soon after that as well. So, and that was the end of Harry's UFO wars within the government department.

His tenure, right? On to enjoying the fruits of his labour. 

ABC coverage of 1959 Boianai UFO "Visitants" and more recent Papuan UAP events

 

I did an interview with ABC Pacific reporter Finau Fonua about Rev William Gill's famous 1959 UFO sightings shared with Papuan locals.  Here is ABC report dated 26 May 2026.

Great to see the response from Boianai locals.

Also here is a link to some of OZ Files posts I have done with these events:

https://theozfiles.blogspot.com/search?q=Boianai

Various explanatory efforts have been found to not explain these striking events.  I include also Greg Bishop's interesting efforts to link it US activities out of the Marshall Islands such as the sensitive Kwajalein site - a very distant and improbable long bow to explain the Papuan sightings.

The literary fallout and legacy of the events is striking particularly with Randolph Stow's confronting masterpiece "Visitants". See my OZ Files coverage on this.

Bill Gill was a very credible witness, as well as the Papuan mission folk.

"Westall '66 - the prehistory of its investigation leading up to the 2006 reunion"

“Westall ’66” – the prehistory of its investigation leading up to the 2006 reunion

by Bill Chalker (April 2026)

The author wrote “The OZ Files – the Australian UFO story” (1996), “Hair of the Alien – DNA and other forensic evidence for alien abductions” (2005), the Australian chapter author of the UFO History Group’s major study “UFOs and Government” (2012) and Australian content author for all editions of Jerome Clark’s “The UFO Encyclopedia” - the 3rd edition (2018) and 4th edition (2024) He has also been a long time column contributor - "The OZ Files" to the UK digital magazine "UFO Truth

Contact information: 

billozfiles@tpg.com.au 

Archived data posts:

https://theozfiles.blogspot.com/

Back on July 11, 2012 I gave a lecture to the UFO & Paranormal Research Society of Australia (UFO-PRSA) in Campbelltown entitled "WESTALL '66: The Sleeper Awakes."  In that presentation I focused on the investigations & research undertaken into the 1966 Westall school UFO case that preceded the more recent research of Shane Ryan which underpinned the impressive Rosie Jones "WESTALL '66: a suburban UFO mystery" documentary (2010).

This article focuses on that “prehistory” period.

Here I show the people associated with the then Victorian Flying Saucer Research society (now known as the Victorian UFO Research Society (VUFORS).

The brief bios show Judy Magee, Peter Norris and Paul Norman, who apparently undertook some investigations at Westall in the days that followed the Westall school UFO incident of April 1966.  Each of this bios comes from contemporary copies of the VFSRS magazine - The Australian Flying Saucer Review (Victorian edition). 

Some limited material that apparently emerged from their enquiries (of which little was ever published) is shown here in the form of a photo apparently taken by Judy Magee of one of alleged UFO landing sites, photo of a witness, a young girl (namely Joy Clarke (nee Tighe)), was also taken by VFSRS investigators. The final photo shows Westall researcher Shane Ryan flanked by Paul & Judy, both of whom sadly passed away in 2012.  The young girl was 12-year-old Joy Tighe and VFSRS had got her to fill out a UFO report form.

The VFSRS magazine also published the 1966 account by one of the students that appeared in the school magazine, "The Clayton Calendar", which was produced by pupils of grade 6C-5C:

"I was in class when the disturbance occurred outside. I didn't take any notice and when the bell went for morning recess my classmates and I went to our lockers and then walked out into the yard. we noticed that all the girls who were doing Physical Education were gathered right down near the end of our playing field. Suddenly the school came alive with excitement and everyone began running down towards where the girls were. I was among the surging mob. I had seen something that looked very unusual in the sky. 

"As I looked up I saw a dazzling, silvery object flying around some pine trees which grew on a ridge about a quarter of a mile directly behind the school. It then flew across some open paddocks also behind the school and returned to the pines. On the other side of the ridge there is a small field. The thing hovered over the pines and descended behind them and must have been directly over the field. I then lost sight of it because of the pines. 

"As the thing was out of sight I began to notice many private aircraft mainly Cessna, flying towards the pines. It was then, the thing reappeared and rose to the level of the approaching aircraft. This enabled me to get a rough idea of its size. It was a silvery object as long as one of the Cessnas, but very thin. 

"As the aircraft approached the thing tilted on about a 45 degree angle and started to move into the distance, gradually gaining height. The planes increased their speed and began to follow it, but the object streaked away leaving the planes far, far behind. The planes turned back, but we all stood hoping it would return but it didn't, so we all went into school, fifteen minutes late. 

"After school two friends and I went to the field where the object had descended. In a few minutes we were crawling

under a barb-wire fence which surrounded the field at a height of about four feet. We waded through the waist-high grass making for a gap in it. Suddenly we were there. We found ourselves standing in a spot where the grass had been utterly crushed against the earth. It was an area of about 25-30 feet in diameter. Cows could not have done it because the fence was barbed, and also cows would have left a track through the grass. There was no track. The object had descended over the field; could it have done this? It all leads back to the same question. What was the object? Some people say it was a weather balloon, but do weather balloons go up and down quickly, crush grass and fly across the skies faster than reasonably speedy aircraft? Otherwise, your guess is as good as mine." 

The proceeding statement by a male student, Jeff Ansell, of Westall High school.  He was a student at both Westall and at Brown's Road State school, about 2 kms NW of the Westall school.  Jeff's sister Karen was a student editor of the Clayton Calendar.   It was teacher Mr. A.G. Waugh who wrote of the "anonymous" student (Jeff Ansell), "I taught him some years ago and found him intelligent and well balanced, and certainly not given to making irresponsible statements."  In his book "Alien Honeycomb" John Pinkney had incorrectly attributed the magazine article release to Andrew Greenwood, who was the eyewitness science teacher at Westall high school.  He also made some errors in the quoting of the Calendar piece, and inflated the newspaper coverage of the day.  As Shane Ryan confirmed to me, as is evident in what actually occur, the event had not been headlined "internationally", nor "intensely" investigated by Melbourne papers. The Dandenong Journal did the most.

Joy Clarke (nee Tighe) and Jeff Ansell - witnesses to the Westall UFO incident. Jeff was the author of the student account in the Clayton Calendar - the Westall High School magazine. (Image: Bill Chalker, 2006))

Joy's April 2006 drawing of the UFO she saw back in April 1966.

(Image: Bill Chalker, 2006)

Peter Norris the president of the VFSRS group back in 1966 did have a cameo in the Rosie Jones documentary but was not able to contribute substantially much detail about the Westall case.  When I spoke with him back in about 1980 he also recollected little about the case and didn't think it must have been an important case.  Peter had strong connections with the Aerial Phenomena Research Organisation (APRO) based in Arizona USA run by Jim & Coral Lorenzen, and was often a source of Australian content in Coral Lorenzen's UFO books that appeared during the 1960s.  However, Westall was not amongst that content.  Similarly, Paul Norman had strong connections with the NICAP group, but in a bid to clarify if NICAP files any Westall data, I contacted Richard Hall.  This was one of the last things that Dick Hall and I communicated about.  However, he too, despite his deep knowledge of NICAP and UFO history had to report that for him and NICAP the April 1966 case had not been picked up on their radar.  His excellent study "Alien Invasion or Human Fantasy? The 1966-67 UFO wave" (a 146-page study) also missed the Westall case despite referencing my 1996 book "The OZ Files - the Australian UFO story" which devoted 6 pages to "The Westall School Sensation."  

Rebecca Latham, producer “The Westall UFO Mystery” (which aired on 6 April 2026 – the 60th anniversary) for “Australian Story”, an iconic ABC TV program, examined the weather balloon explanatory possibility.  Richard Saunders of the Australian Skeptics suggested that weather balloons were a possible explanation.  Rebecca Latham found that NOAA (the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) had the old met balloon data sets on line.

In a report dated 23 April 2026 she wrote:

“Once you adjust for Greenwich mean time and the US dating process, I realised the data behind the actual balloon launch from Laverton that morning at 9am is available.  It gives us all the data... amazing... which is interesting and revealing... and it's possible to calculate the altitude and the speed and the whereabouts of the balloon in relation to Westall that morning.

“And the upshot - which can now be proved - is that it was too high and too far away to have anything to do with Westall.

“And of course winds at higher altitudes are very different to wind strength closer to the ground. It proves that by the time the balloon popped and descended it was around 170 kilometres away from Melbourne.  

“I've attached my written summary of the material and a non-animated track of the flight, plus the original NOAA dataset. You can look this up for yourselves as well.  I have an animated track of the flight arc as well, with the data for each point that balloon sensors noted…

“I had all the calculations checked by a couple of honours students studying pure maths and geoscience at USYD (University of Sydney – B.C.) and their findings concurred with mine.”

With the HIBAL explanation (launched from Mildura on April 5, 1966) I've been looking at HIBAL data, and while there is no definitive data that provides for certainty of a touchdown in the Westall area, the evidence available supports a relatively normal flight on the day before Westall (by virtue of the "typical" data set of monitor results) and the PM's secretary SECRET memo about 2 weeks later, reviewing insurance premiums etc, supports that there was no dramatic, hysteria inducing "touch down" in a metropolitan area, of either the balloon or its payload with parachute.  

So, weather balloon & HIBAL seem a very poor fit for the explaining the bulk of the witness testimony re Westall.

The Dandenong Journal April 14, 1966

The Dandenong Journal 21 April, 1966

Science Teacher Andrew Greenwood’s statement as described in the Dandenong Journal 21 April 1966:

"He said 5 light aircraft were circling the object and were flying at a relatively low altitude. The aircraft had played a 'cat & mouse' kind of game with the object. He described the object as like a thin beam of light, about half the length of a light aircraft. It was silvery-grey and seemed to thicken at times. 

"The thickening was similar to when a disc is turned a little to show the underside. The object was never really stationary. It seemed to move from side to side and up and down. 

"At first there was one plane apparently observing the object. 

Later, Mr. Greenwood noticed 5 aircraft which attempted to follow the object as it Occasionally accelerated back and forth from east to west. Mr. Greenwood first saw the object when it rose into the air from behind pine trees near the school. After about 20 minutes (at about the end of morning recess) Mr. Greenwood looked away, and when he looked back it had disappeared." 

The Journal indicated that one pilot, Mr. Bob Ford, indicated he had been flying "somewhere in that area" at the time, but did not see anything unusual. No other pilots were found who indicated they had been in the area and saw something. 

Another student, Marilyn Eastwood, described the object as "round, with a hump on top and round things underneath."

Judy Magee had connections with the British Flying Saucer Review (FSR) and passed on the Dandenong Journal account which was published in FSR Vol. 12 No.4 1966:

The publication of the Dandenong Journal article in FSR probably led to the first mention of the Westall affair being mentioned in book form, namely in APRO (Aerial Phenomena Research Organisation) co-director Coral Lorenzen’s book “Flying Saucers – The Startling Evidence of the Invasion from Outer Space” (Signet paperback, October, 1966) on page 273:

“A round, gray object with a flat base and a hump on top was observed by science teacher Andrew Greenwood and students, while it hovered and maneuvered near the Westall School in Clayton, Australia, on April 6. The object was first spotted when it rose into the air from behind pine trees near the school.  Greenwood watched it, along with some of the students, for about twenty minutes, looked away for a few seconds and when he looked back it was gone.”

                                          

The following extract from Ann Druffel’s excellent book “Firestorm – Dr. James E. McDonald’s Fight for UFO science” (2003) recounts McDonald’s account of the Westall case, based on his interviews with Andrew Greenwood and Dr. Berson during his visit to Australia in 1967. The book misspells Westall, Moorabbin & Samblebe, which I have corrected:

“This case occurred on the morning of April 6,1966, at Westall High School in Melbourne. One of the primary witnesses was Andrew Greenwood, a teacher at Westall, who was later interviewed by McDonald. A child had run into his classroom to tell him that "flying saucers were outside!" Greenwood did not wish to break up his class, and he instructed the child to go back to her physical education class in the yard. Ten minutes later the morning recess bell rang, and Greenwood went outside. Half of the school, about 300 children between 11-15 years of age, were on the playground staring at an unidentified gray object in the blue sky. The object was cigar-shaped but at times "bulged" in the middle. Greenwood could not determine the cause of this shape change but had the impression that the object might be changing position in the sky, thereby presenting different aspects to the viewers. 

“The distance of the object varied from about 1000 yards to about 500 yards at its nearest approaches. It alternated between hovering motionless and accelerating almost out of sight, then returning to position. As Greenwood and the children watched, a Cessna came up and tried to get near the UFO. The object was about two-thirds the size of the Cessna. The object began to play "cat and mouse," and more Cessnas came, until there were five. Moorabbin Airport, about four miles away, was checked, but personnel there stated there were no planes from that airport in the air. "It was silly of them to deny it because there are almost always planes up," Greenwood told McDonald. 

“Greenwood and the children watched the object and the planes for 15 min- utes, until the object abruptly accelerated out of sight, leaving the planes still in the air. Greenwood questioned the other teachers. The physical education teacher, Jeanette Muir, confirmed she'd seen it but then "clammed up." Claude Miller, senior English master, saw the object near the end of the sighting. The Air Force came to the school, ostensibly to check out the report. They spoke with Head- master Frank Samblebe. McDonald's journal describes what happened: 

Somehow Samblebe got on edge. At the assembly that noon he spoke on it and said it was a lot of rubbish. Was his first year as Head [master], went by book, wanted to keep things on regulation. When Air Force came he refused to call Andrew Greenwood out of class to talk to them. A. G. thinks he sent them packing, and came out muttering 'what rot’. 

“Although several teachers and 300 students had seen a strange object pursued by Cessna aircraft for almost a half hour, the RAAF made no further follow-up, to anyone's knowledge. "What puzzles and amuses Greenwood most is [that] Moorabbin Airport claims that no planes were up," wrote McDonald. 

“In his Australian journal, McDonald kept a list of a dozen physicists and astronomers, to whom he had been referred by Australian and American re- searchers. The list included Dr. F. A. Berson, a scientist with the Division of Meteorological Physics, CSIRO, Aspendale, with whom McDonald met personally. Dr. Berson had seen an anomalous red glowing object in the night sky in September 1963. It was large, about half lunar diameter, and later split into two sections and disappeared. A similar object, appearing across town at the same time and viewed by independent witnesses, was reported in the press. 

“Berson tracked down the witnesses and was able to make azimuth readings which demonstrated that the object was too large to be either a balloon or a hoax. 

“Dr. Berson had done his own investigation of the Westall High School sighting. He'd called Moorabbin Airport also, but had been told that he would have to call four separate companies in order to try to track down the source of the five Cessnas! He'd learned that students at Clayton School had also seen the object at the same time. He went to the Department of Air, but was given no information. There he was told by an aviation instructor, "We have a sub-chasing aircraft with very bright lights that can be misinterpreted." The Australian officials were reaching as far afield for "explanations" as Project Blue Book did. 

“Dr. Berson, together with another scientist, Professor of Theoretical Physics Stuart T. Butler of Sydney, quietly began their own study of Australian sightings, possibly encouraged by McDonald's example. 

"I would emphatically disassociate myself from the people who claim to have contacted flying saucers [contactees]. Their stories are so wildly improbable that it seems to me to involve the suspicion of mental unbalance of some sort," Dr. Butler was quoted. "At the same time, in view of the probable existence of some other intelligent race in the universe, I think we have to keep an open mind on the possibility of some UFOs being intelligently directed." 

Here is an extract of a 11 May 1967 letter by Dr. Andrzej F. Berson, principal research scientist of the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation) Division of Meteorological Physics to Robert Low, the U.S. Condon committee UFO project coordinator that refers to the Department of Air (“D.A.”) and their interest in the Westall school case:

(courtesy of Jan Aldrich)

During 1977 Ray Fischer of the Victorian UFO Research Society revealed to me that they had interviewed a man who came on the scene at about 5 pm of the day of the sightings. He saw a "a perfect circle of flattened grass, flattened right down to ground level, in grass that was about two feet high. This man recollected that he thought the area was about 30 feet in diameter. He returned a few days later to find a team of "military or air force people" going over the site. A couple of technical looking vans were parked outside. He saw that people in uniform were examining the circle with what he took to be radiation detectors. Officials there told him he couldn't go into the field and to move on. This gentleman returned to the site a third time, only to find that the paddock had been burnt out. (see attached letter 26.2/1977)                                              

John Pinkney, who helped found the VFSRS back in 1957, also described the Westall affair in his book “Alien Honeycomb” (1980), which he co-wrote with Leonard Ryzman.  He also described the case in some of his columns.

Others parties have several other events that were alleged to have been related to this fascinating affair. Some witnesses described seeing a cow in the paddock, where the UFO came down. It was alleged to have been in such a distressed state that it eventually had to be put down. There have been persistent stories that one schoolgirl, the first student to arrive at the landing site, was found be in a dazed, trance like state, as if she was very shocked. There were unconfirmed rumours that this girl never fully recovered from this experience and spent some time in a hospital at Kew. The teacher who took photos of the site, was allegedly told by the headmaster that "if you want to keep on teaching you have to keep your mouth shut and we want the film." The film allegedly ended up in the hands of the RAAF or Army, but predictably there has been no confirmation of that detail. 

A woman claimed the UFO involved in the Westall school landing, had hovered over her house, above trees, before it landed behind the school. The UFO was allegedly above the trees for 5 or 10 minutes before it landed. The woman claimed the UFO "was trying to find a place to land." She states she followed it, but that "it started to get a bit spooky". She started to return home, but then went back, only to be allegedly turned away by police. 

One source indicated that 200 to 300 kids raced down to the fence where the UFO had landed. There was "some guy walking around in white overalls and he was telling everyone to keep back and another guy appeared and he had some sort of uniform Both men had overalls - one was fully white - the other had a dark uniform, but it had an emblem or a logo on it." According to that source, these men were normal looking, and seemed to be walking around the UFO on the ground. "One of the guys disappeared into the aircraft - the one on the ground - they didn't see where the other one went - the last they saw, he was around the other side of them. They disappeared." It was alleged by at least one source that the UFO had "sort of crash landed", that there were 3 "aircraft" above it, "hovering above it. They were white - they didn't have wings and they didn't have engines ... all they did was hum. The humming got louder, when they took off. Then within a few minutes this "flying saucer" took off." 

Much of the stranger details, described above, emerged from contact I had with a researcher named Ron Cameron, who had come to some prominence with claims of divers reporting they had discovered the Cessna involved in the disappearance of Frederick Valentich over Bass Strait in October 1978. Little of that story was confirmable.  I made contact with him in January 1984 and he told me that he had undertaken research into the Westall case, initially at the request of Dr. Ian Gordon, with a view to make a documentary. The documentary was not made, but he told me that the research had uncovered some interesting details about the Westall event:

1. At least 14 of the original witnesses had been interviewed, and all basically told the same story.

2. All the children had been told “to shut up about it.”

3. One of the teachers took some photos.  A lot of the children confirmed this.  The headmaster at the time told the teacher that “if you want to keep on teaching, you’ve got to keep your mouth shut and we want the film.” The film ostensibly ended up in the hands of the RAAF or Army.

4. One very young girl was apparently the first down to the site of the landing. His informants told him that “ever since after that she was never the same … she had a nervous breakdown … She spent sometime in a hospital over in Kew, but after that we don’t know where she is.”

5. One woman claimed the UFO had hovered over her house, above trees, before it landed behind the school.  Before it landed, the UFO was up above the trees for 5 or 10 minutes.  The woman said “it was trying to find a place to land.”  She followed it.  Everyone was telling her to get away.  She had a good look at it “but it started to get a bit spooky.”  She started to come back, then she decided to go back to the site again, but at that point police told her to go away.

6 & 7. (as per the above paragraph describing the men walking around the “aircraft” on the ground.)

8. The headmaster “was jumping up and down because all the kids were over there.  Next minute the police came & the army came … the army burnt the whole lot.”

9. “And I believe that Channel 9 were the first there to do a story and the film never went to air.  They interviewed some kids … Some one else said it would be to their benefit if it didn’t go to air.” 

10. The area where the UFO landed was near or on market gardens.  Where it “crash-landed” a sports building has been built in the last 2 years (1982-84?)

11.  There were “heaps” of “thick blackberry bushes” at the landing site.  “Where it landed they won’t grow again.”

12. All this information had been obtained during the last 5 years.  Much of the information is recorded in taped interviews.”

Ron Cameron told me he had “a large tea box of archives, tapes, etc.  Little of Ron Cameron’s evidence was confirmed.  He did supply me with the contact details of the Anderson family who had witnessed some of these events.  I was able to subsequently confirm some of this information via conversations with the Anderson children (Bobbie & Keith).  Back in 1976 I saw on a channel 9 current affair program an archive TV interview with one of the girls, along with a sketch of the UFO she had made. I felt that this was Marylin Eastwood based on my memory of sighting the original Dandenong Journal article.

Evidence confirms that Channel 9 did air a TV news story on the night of the Westall event.

In a February 1984 letter to Dr Ian Gordon, (former head of the Curriculum and Research branch of the Victorian Education, author of a number of books including “The Andronicus Tapes” (1983) and “Cosmic Communications from the Ogattans” (2013), that were informed by spiritualist type communications. Ian Gordon also practiced spiritual ministry). I wrote, “I was also intrigued to hear that you have a great deal of information about the famous 1966 Westall/Clayton landing adjacent to Westall High School and that one of the witnesses either worked with you or still does.  I would be most grateful if you could advise me of your findings about this important case.  I was surprised to learn that the event may have been more than a landing and take off and that some people observed “men” with the UFO on the ground.  This is not a situation I was familiar with until recently.  As I have long been interested in “physical trace” events, i.e. landings which leave behind marks, and following my access to the RAAF files during 1982, after which I have further researched the question of alleged “official coverups,” I would be most grateful to get copies of your documentation of this affair.”

From my “The Westall School Sensation” segment in my 1996 book “The OZ Files – the Australian UFO story”:

A school prefect (Graham Simmonds) years later described to Dr. Ian Gordon how he had been in a chemistry class during the incident. He had seen, out through the windows, along with many other students and some teachers, both inside and outside class rooms, what seemed to him to be an object of a "classic flying saucer shape", silver blue in colour, come down behind a group of pine trees in an undeveloped area, not more than 200 metres from Fairbank Road. There had been two objects according to what he had heard but he only saw what seems to have been the first of these. 

All of a sudden everyone in the sports class took off in a south west direction, including some of the teachers, like there was a mass evacuation of the school, all "after a flying saucer". According to the prefect the thing had come down behind a group of pine trees. A large area of flatten grass was found there, perfectly circular in shape, about 30 feet in diameter, with 3 scorch marks. The grass was very dry, but it hadn't started a fire. In a westerly direction from the site, a man approached the school group, and told them all "to piss off" because it was private property. The property had been standing idle for many years. The man walked through the area of flattened grass and seemed to "ignore its existence", according to the prefect. When he was told by numerous screaming children that a flying saucer had come down there, he said "bull shit" and various other things. The school children eventually returned to the school, accompanied by a number of teachers who had "followed the mass exodus". 

The prefect was berated by the school principal for being "irresponsible" in following the rest of the students (and teachers). Students were forbidden to talk to the press. Some students were interviewed in Rosebank Avenue, near the school. There was a phone call to the principal. He made an announcement that no such thing had been seen and put it down to "mass hysteria".

In 1984 Ian Gordon provided me with a copy of the interview he had done with Graham Simmonds, upon which the above account is based.  Ian began researching UFOs after a number of sightings, “contact” experiences, and then a deep embrace of spiritual ministry.

“Once Upon a Time in Westall” (20 April, 2006) –  https://theozfiles.blogspot.com

The morning started out like a moment out of the beginning of Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West" - stepping off a isolated platform at what seemed to be an incongruously isolated train station for a suburban Melbourne stop. Westall suburbia was some distance removed and was found soon enough. Like the movie things soon got interesting.

The day was April 8, 2006, and I was in Westall for a strange reunion of sorts - 40 years after the extraordinary events of April 6, 1966 - the Westall School UFO sensation - where numerous school children from the high school and primary school, along with some teachers and others witnessed a UFO which apparently landed nearby among the pines and scrubs of the Grange area. Witnesses reported authorities such as the police and military turning up in short order and the landing area was soon subject to all sorts of attention.

After 40 years witnesses, researchers and interested parties had come together to try to draw the jig-saw puzzle pieces together of what really happened that day. As I concluded in my account of the events in my book "The OZ Files - the Australian UFO Story" (1996):

"There is little doubt that something of an extraordinary nature was seen over the Westall school area and that at least one (UFO) appears to have landed and apparently left behind some physical traces. Numerous witnesses confirm these basic details. Other more exotic details vary in credibility ..."

For researchers like Canberra academic Shane Ryan, Melbourne UFO researcher George Simpson and myself the day was an extraordinary opportunity for learning a lot more about the events. Quite a number of witnesses to the events of the day turned up, making the reunion a satisfying occasion for witnesses, researchers and interested parties alike. The reunion certainly added to the momentum of recent efforts to unravel the 1966 Westall UFO mystery.

Photo: (B. Chalker 2006) Shane Ryan, George Simpson & Bill Chalker at the Westall reunion.

From my blog “Westall ’66 – a suburban UFO Mystery” 24 May, 2010 https://theozfiles.blogspot.com

The world premiere of a striking documentary about an extraordinary event takes place on the Australian SCI FI channel, Foxtel, 8.30 pm, Friday, 4th June, 2010. WESTALL '66 a suburban UFO mystery deserves a wide audience as it gives a fascinating picture of a haunting UFO incident that took place 44 years ago in the outer Melbourne suburb.

The press kit accompanying the release gives a potent one paragraph summary of the incident

"In 1966, in the Australian suburb of Westall, hundreds of students, teachers and local residents witnessed a UFO hover overhead for several minutes, land and take off again at incredible speed. Silenced by authorities at the time, and still angry about not being believed, they revisit the event as tenacious amateur sleuth Shane Ryan goes back to find an answer to the mystery. With an undercurrent of Cold War paranoia, and a burgeoning military alliance between Australia and America, their story has a deep resonance in the current cover-ups and lies delivered by governments in the interests of national security."

Director Rosie Jones came across the story via a story in the Melbourne Age which connected her to the efforts of Canberra academic Shane Ryan to get to the bottom of the enigmatic events. After 3 years of solid research, filming and editing we now have the opportunity to view the fascinating result of all those efforts.

                              

(The Sci-Fi channel copies includes my Westall drawing on their disks)

I watched the documentary on May 24 and was immediately impressed by the style of the film. Shane Ryan's investigation is used as the connecting vehicle for revealing the story, but it is the witnesses' stories that tellingly describe the impact and haunting nature of the affair.

It is a powerful narrative of a reality denied by authority but revealed in compelling ways through the words of the witnesses and the wonderfully inspired decision to use the charcoal drawings and animations of animator Lee Whitmore. Anyone who has seen the film "The Safe House" (which gives an extraordinary perspective on the Petrov affair) will be immediately attracted to this documentary, as it uses Lee Whitmore's artistic skills to great effect. The black and white renderings of the key 1966 Westall events hauntingly evoke the 1960s era and the visions of the impossible witnessed mainly by school children. There were adult witnesses who also share their stories.

It is impossible to tell the full Westall UFO story in one documentary but WESTALL '66 certainly captures the essence of the events and powerfully shows why we should take notice of this story and demand to know what really happened that day - 6 April 1966. I think the documentary will be a powerful catalyst towards achieving that objective.

I should reveal that this is a biased review. I too have been haunted by what happened at Westall in 1966. 1966 was a pivotal year for me as it marked my embrace of the subject in a personal way - my home town of Grafton had a police UFO chase that gained media prominence. It wasn't long before my teenage interests in the UFO subject started to give me glimpses of the 1966 Westall mystery, but the astonishing magnitude of the saga was a slowly revealed thing, mainly because of the effectiveness of the cover-up that clearly took place. It captured my attention even further when it was apparent that the events even feature physical evidence - ground traces - an aspect of the UFO phenomenon that became a central interest for me. It was a case that I returned to many times as leads turned up. By the early 1980s a number of witnesses were starting to create a critical mass of interest. I devoted a lot of pages in my Australian UFO history "The OZ Files" to the Westall affair as I recognised it as a very strong case. But it wasn't until the Internet allowed for a greater communication among researchers and witnesses that the momentum developed into a great tide of information. Shane Ryan was instrumental in drawing these more recently revealed factors together and his persistence has been rewarded with a rich picture of the events. I closely followed the efforts of Shane Ryan, Rosie Jones and her documentary team, assisting where I could.

It is the witnesses though that have told the story and I hope they feel that their extraordinary experiences back in April 1966 have been well served by these efforts and the documentary. The profile of the events will be further enhanced and I hope it will bring further evidence to the surface, particularly the elusive details of the heavy hidden hand that originally supressed the extraordinary events.

Watching WESTALL '66 you will be entertained, intrigued and struck by the realisation that something quite extraordinary took place in Westall on April 6, 1966. I hope it gets you enthralled with the possibilities it reveals. Hoax or hysteria - I don't think so. Experimental aircraft - maybe, but the totality of what occurred there seems to argue for the more extraordinary possibility - that something that wasn't ours intruded into our world. I know I'm not alone wanting to know what happened. WESTALL '66 - a suburban UFO mystery - is a powerful evocation of the mystery. 

The Westall events have been described in numerous articles, podcasts, documentaries and other special events.  The most prominent of these have been Rosie Jone’s 2010 “Westall ’66 – a suburban UFO mystery” (featuring Shane Ryan as he began his long focused investigation of the events), Zev Howley’s “The Man who saw them arrive”, Grant Lavac’s “Westall 60 years on”, the 60th anniversary reunion at the Grange, the iconic ABC Australian Story show episode “The Westall UFO mystery” (aired on 6 April 2026, the exact 60th anniversary), and the 12 April 2026 Westall Library event (which featured a panel of Westall witnesses) and Shane Ryan’s detailed presentation and announcement of his forthcoming book “In broad daylight – the day UFOs arrived over Melbourne – the story of the 1966 Westall UFO Incident.”