The 1966 Westall UFO incident

More on the Westall and Burkes Flat incidents from Australian researcher Bill Chalker (part 1 of 2).

TUESDAY, MARCH 05, 2013

WESTALL '66: the sleeper awakes

The following 4 photos show (clockwise from upper left) Shane Ryan, George Simpson and myself (Bill Chalker) at the Westall April 2006 renunion which brought together many witnesses to the original event, including Joy and Jeff - witnesses to the 1966 Westall UFO incident. Jeff was the author of the student account in the Clayton Calendar. At the reunion I met researcher/director Rosie Jones and producer Carmel McAloon who were just beginning work on their documentary. The reunion led to a feature story in the Women's Day magazine: "We've Kept our UFO secret for 40 years."

link

Very interesting event.

TheUFOguy

Very interesting event.

Yes TheUFOguy it sure is - here's a good interview with Rosie Jones who produced the 'Westall '66 -A suburban UFO mystery" documentary.

Interview link

One of the strangest UFO mysteries happened in the suburbs of Melbourne in the sixties - the sighting of a UFO at a local school by some 200 people.

You may have thought this would be big news - but it seems to have disappeared from history. Did it really happen?

Cheers.

This is a great sighting, one that I really enjoy. Over 200 witnesses have come forward. I guess the 50th anniversary is coming up next year.

So has anyone come up with an explanation that doesn't involve ET? Or are you going to tell me a craft from some black project, not visually experiencing any problems, is going to land in the middle of the day while classes are in session at a high school? Doesn't that logically contradict the basic premise of "black project"?

a reply to: PlanetXisHERE

Well it's quite simple really.

It was just a weather balloon as reported the next day in "The Age" and the (RAAF) Royal Australian Air Force conducting an exercise>



A gentleman, who would only confirm he was a former RAAF navigator, wrote a letter to the Dandenong Journal on April 28th 1966.He said that the UFO was a "reasonably accurate" description of a nylon target drogue. This would be towed by one aircraft whilst others would chase. The "drogue" was also known to be in use by the local RAAF at the time. RAAF pilots at the time underwent training by following the drogue. This was nothing more than a normal RAAF exercise.

RAAF, Weather balloons? Where have we heard that before? Hmmmm

You do know this case is known as 'Ozwell' don't you?

This is a far more interesting case than Roswell, and I am not convinced that it had anything to do with a weather balloon.

a reply to: Mogget

Probably the best online documentation of this siting is here.

Westall 66 a Surburban UFO Mystery

Another recreation of the event was done by the new TV series, Close Encounters - season 1 episode 5. Can be viewed with an amazon account

From skeptical point of view, there is Mr.Dunning's take


If you take it all in, the weather balloon or drogue are just cursory explanations that really fail to explain the details of the case. For those who are skeptically inclined, pictures were taken, but confiscated as the first link details, so your skeptism is safe.

IMO, the remote possibility of experimental military craft is more probable than the drogue or balloon explanation. However if it was military, how wreckless to let this anti-grav craft loose around a schoolyard in broad daylight. And where is this technology now, could the govt have really kept anti-grav from the public for nearly 50 years? In the end it is just a wild theory some might entertain because the ET possibility isnt in play as a solution for some people.

A more recent thread on this siting

a reply to: mirageman

Ha Ha, you had me going for a sec, sounding like others on here!

Yes........a weather balloon..........that looks like a metallic disk........can take off at tremendous speed......and is chased by five unidentified aircraft? Yes, definitely a weather balloon.........

a reply to: PlanetXisHERE

Just a little dry humour my friend. I think this is one I'll keep on my interesting list.

But the weather balloon from Project HIBAL really was a theory put forward by Keith Basterfield. Flight 292 to be exact. The crux of the problem is that all the documents have been destroyed that could have proved/disproved the theory. This is not a case I know in any depth but it is similar to the Broadhaven School UFO from mid-70s in Britain and the later Ruwa, Zimbabwe case. Karl's links in the thread are great source of information BTW.

originally posted by: mirageman
a reply to: PlanetXisHERE

Just a little dry humour my friend. I think this is one I'll keep on my interesting list.

But the weather balloon from Project HIBAL really was a theory put forward by Keith Basterfield. Flight 292 to be exact. The crux of the problem is that all the documents have been destroyed that could have proved/disproved the theory. This is not a case I know in any depth but it is similar to the Broadhaven School UFO from mid-70s in Britain and the later Ruwa, Zimbabwe case. Karl's links in the thread are great source of information BTW.

Yes, that's what I figured, sometimes dry humour is tougher to convey online, you have to know the person, but I have seen that before with you.

Is there any information about HIBAL online? You really think a weather balloon could land (of course it could land), and take off with great speed? Most of the witnesses seemed to indicate a metallic disk shape.....

a reply to: Chadwickus

Nazi's from Antarctic base......



On a serious note, thanks for sharing this find. This is one i wasn't aware of and it is an extremely interesting case, given the witnesses essentially telling the same story (apart from V). This appears to be one of "those" cases where this object is genuinely unidentifiable.

From a critical standpoint, does anyone know how much US testing was done in Australia at this period? I have thought of this before, on entirely unrelated topics. The reason i ask is that i have thought Australia would have been perfect for US Cold War testing in that Soviet satellites were concentrated on North America and Europe so with Australia being an ally, it could have provided a great "secret" base for testing new technologies. It isn't something i have been able to find much about, hence the question.

a reply to: PlanetXisHERE

There are a few . Here's a couple

www.neonnettle.com...

This was written by Keith Basterfield.

ufos-scientificresearch.blogspot.co.uk...

a reply to: mirageman

Thanks! However, after reading the article the "high-altitude radiation balloon" explanation seems seriously flawed.

High altitude balloons generally look like this, I don't anyone would call it "disk-shaped"



Also, once they were away from their original source of lift, I don't think they would be capable of a quick get-away.

a reply to: PlanetXisHERE

I really don't know enough about this case to say what it was or what it wasn't. I would tend to agree that it doesn't seem to be a weather balloon from what I do know about it.

I found this Australian government document which came from a link in one of the sites linked previously.



It talks about inserting an indemnity clause to extend HIBAL to enable experiments on behalf of in case of "the real risk of injury from descending instrument packages".

Now surely a memo written so shortly after the Westall incident would mention the risk to hundreds of schoolchildren already encountered if this really was something linked to HIBAL?

a reply to: mirageman

Yes, you think they would have mentioned the Westall incident to give some context.

This is a truly fascinating case, you think it would remain in the public consciousness and be talked about endlessly for decades until truly solved.

I only heard about it on here, and the fact that we hear nothing about it in the MSM is proof to me that:

1. The MSM is complicit in the cover-up of such events

2. It is related to something significant, only something important would need to be sanitized from the public consciousness (like alien interaction). Any black projects could be admitted to at this point FIFTY years from the original event.

a reply to: PlanetXisHERE

Yes I am intrigued by it and have known the basics about it for quite some time. But it's the fine details of this case I am not clued up on. Daylight sightings by large numbers of witnesses are very rare and had it happened today we would surely have had dozens of pictures and videos from smart phones. But alas this happened in 1966 and no one even had a camera on hand.


I wouldn't say this is a particularly unknown case. The UK Daily Telegraph here even voted it 5th in the all time top UFO cases. There are a number of famous Australian UFO cases of which this along with the Fred Valentich case from 1978 are probably the best known. I don't think the media has made any attempt to cover this story up in Britain and certainly not Australia. But perhaps North America has a different focus. Perhaps this one just passed you by?

But alas this happened in 1966 and no one even had a camera on hand.

Pictures were taken by the chemistry teacher, confiscated. The Australian govt could show all us UFO cooks that it was no big deal, just a weather balloon, they have the evidence to prove it...maybe.

Imo the images people have drawn are equally as good, they were just a few meters away in the daylight. It didnt zoom by at mach 3, it was down on the ground right in front of their faces.

Did they ever locate the girl that never returned to the school?

a reply to: 111DPKING111

I am quite happy to stand corrected as I have not studied the finer details of this case.

Who confiscated the pictures? Surely if it was even a top secret 'weather balloon' then nearly 50 years on there is no need to cover it all up?

Do you think the drawings bear any similarity to an these from schoolchildren in Broadhaven (half way across the world in Wales) from a similar daylight incident in 1977.

a reply to: mirageman

Who confiscated the pictures?

at 12:40 of this video, it is discussed. It appeared to be the police.

at 10:00 of the same video, the person responsible for the picture most seen with the incident, Victor Zakruzny, gives his account. The drawing is at 11:06

It probably resembles picture 3 the most. However all saucer shaped craft bear some resemblance, not sure much correlation could be made.


I havent checked out the Broadhaven story, will give it a look.