The Ngatea mystery - NZ's Roswell?

I have been a member here on ATS for a few years now, but I have never got round to joining in on a UFO forum yet, which is kind of ironic since I stumbled upon this site after a google search on UFOs

Anyways, I have always meant to share with everyone on here the rather mysterious story that is a local legend in my home town and one that occurred only a few km away from where I physically lived.

The Ngatea mystery circles

If you want to see the area where this took place, a local of the day (now dead) took us past the site. You can go to google maps and enter; Pouarua Road, Ngatea, New Zealand. I cannot see the exact spot where it occurred any more as the area has now been cleared and it looks like the barn has now been demolished too, but it was somewhere along Phillips road on the Orchard Road side in the block between Poarua road and Kaihere road.

The enduring mystery is whether it was herbicide that killed the scrub or whether that was a cover story. Facts like radiation being found in the wood, the soil not being able to grow anything and the three mysterious marks in the ground are all extremely anomalous. Having grown up just down the road from this, I know for a fact that the soil is extremely fertile. I do know that there are mysterious funghi in the soil, but I have never seen anything die off like that before. This leaves herbicide and once again, this does not quite explain everything correctly.

The old timer that shared the story with my family mentioned many other anomalies in the area where our farm is located today including sharing with us that strange orange balls of light could be seen over the uncleared scrub some nights.

I myself have seen these orange lights over the end of Central Road (the southern portion of it) my brother was a witness to these too. We have never been able to explain them as they simply sat there for over an hour hovering.

I'm curious as to what the signs/marks in ground were. Do you have a discription or picture a picture of something they looked like( them not being there anymore I take it).

reply to post by Isittruee


I will keep hunting for you' as the images I have seen so far, other than on that link in the OP look fake to me. In the mean time, I know I have seen better pictures in a book by local mayor Rufus Tye.

trove.nla.gov.au...

This is an old book and I am not sure if it is available online though.

reply to post by markosity1973


My mistake I've seen to have forgotten about the link as I was reading anything else. Sorry about that, going check it out now.

More info on the circles;

Pouraua South Road stretches for a mile across a gravel surface on the Hauraki Plains. It heads into an uninviting scrubland where manuka bushes predominate. Here a fifty-acre block of land is owned by a former dairy farmer, Bert O’Neil, who on 4 September 1969 made a startling discovery. Something, it appeared, had landed on his property leaving a bleached circle of manuka about fifty feet across, there were three V-shaped grooves of disturbed peat soil in the centre of the circle, each about two or three inches deep and spaced precisely nine feet apart. Nowhere had the manuka been crushed, leading Mr. O’Neil to theorize that “three legs had been slid into the ground and then splayed outward.” A reporter for one of Auckland’s weekend newspapers wrote: “The manuka, which is extremely healthy elsewhere, seems to have been bleached grey-white and dry by heat inside the clearly defined circle. The scrub has definitely not been burned.” The Ngatea circle caused considerable excitement — more than any previously reported UFO sighting in New Zealand, in fact, for here at least was something tangible. Hordes of people came by car for days after, trampling about the area in search of heaven knows what. As usual, official investigators were among the late arrivals, and before long the explanations were coming at rapid-fire pace. The area had been hit by a “blight,” thus the grey-white manuka; the marks in the ground had been made by pigs, rooting for feed; and so on. A fungus was found to be growing on the manuka, and this was acclaimed as the cause of the condition of the scrub — although no one was able to state why only a near-perfect circle had been attacked. Then it was found by scientific examination of the manuka, that the branches and trunks were dry of sap and had been “cooked” from the inside out — rather as if they had been exposed to extreme radiation. A TV garden-show host, Reg Chibnall, made independent tests on the soils from inside the circle and from outside; he found that seed grew normally in the latter soils, but produced miserable, diseased-looking plants in pots containing soil from inside the circle. The then Minister of Science favored the fungus-and-pigs version and dismissed the whole affair. Meanwhile, scientists at Auckland University concluded that dead spiders in the bleached manuka area had been killed from radiation. Mr. Don Lockwood, of Waihi, made another interesting discovery: twenty-two feet out from the centre-line position of the ground marks, the manuka showed signs of where the radiation had ended and the rest of the tree had died. This point of demarcation was just above ground level, but increased in height up the trees the further to the south the checks were made. Tree and other samples were collected by Mr. H.L. Cooke, of Tauranga, and these were examined by a horticulturist in the same city. Mr. Stuart-Menzies, who gave the following report: “The scrub is radioactive and has been cooked instantaneously from the inside outward. I know of no earthly source of energy which could produce this effect. The manuka was bleached dry but showed no visible signs of burning. Every ounce of moisture in the plant had been instantaneously vaporized, and it was bone-dry and brittle. This is most unusual in manuka, which normally takes a long time to dry out. Some kind of high-frequency radiation cooked the material from the inside outward. The energy received reduced the pith to black carbon, without the outside showing any sign of burning. The cells in the medullary rays were burnt by the sudden vaporization of cell sap. A meteorite or lightning could not do this, and it was too sudden for combustion.” Mr. Stuart-Menzies added that the process appeared to have been similar to that employed in infra-red-cooking, “but on an enormous scale.”

Source

And another link with more pics

thebiggeststudy.blogspot.com.au... rks-in-new-zealand-1969.html

Interesting. The "official" sources of course gave the spray and fungal excuse while the private investigations say other wise. They do both agree on one thing though. It happened 3-6 months before he found it. So my two points are.
1: The effected area sketch in no way looks like any kind of craft was there. It has no kind of shape. Unless "official" investigators drew it that way on purpose.
2: how does an 8" deep depression stay there for 3-6 months? Rain water didn't fill it with other soil? No type of animal treked through it and obscured it?

Makes you think though. Especially the report of a UFO being seen by two pilots and on radar day he discovered it.

Originally posted by Isittruee
Interesting. The "official" sources of course gave the spray and fungal excuse while the private investigations say other wise. They do both agree on one thing though. It happened 3-6 months before he found it. So my two points are.
1: The effected area sketch in no way looks like any kind of craft was there. It has no kind of shape. Unless "official" investigators drew it that way on purpose.

Yes, the sketch only shows the triangular form of the depressions. The question I ask is that if say 3 drums of 245-t spray fell out of a plane, where are the remants of them? Why was the soil and trees radioactive? NZ has no uranium or nuclear technology of any kind - it has been decleared a nuclear free zone.

2: how does an 8" deep depression stay there for 3-6 months? Rain water didn't fill it with other soil? No type of animal treked through it and obscured it?

To be completely honest, it wouldn't. The area it is in is peat swamp and the soil is basically jelly with a thin crust on top. It is also a high rainfall area so it would have definitely rained several times in the time they were supposed to have been there before being discovered. These depressions were discovered in September - meaning that if they were created 3 months prior it would have been approx Jun - Jul . That is mid winter for NZ and the time of the highest rainfall - pretty much every single day at that time of year.

Another link with a good photo of the ground markings this time (Scroll down the page)

books.google.com.au... =YaucUeyKL4n0lAXHuoDgCA&ved=0CE4Q6AEwBzgK#v=onepage&q=ngatea%20ufo&f=false

reply to post by markosity1973


The early testing showed the area not to be radioactive.
www.ufocusnz.org.nz...

"A crude radiography test for radioactivity was carried out in one depression and in the middle of the triangle, but this proved negative. Soil and scrub samples were taken. A piece of ti-tree was subjected to a gamma spectrum test; this proved negative."

Some time later other results are anounced :

The Wellington Evening Post of September 10 carried the feature; Wellington Victoria University staff had noted it; but when a leading horticulturalist, Mr Stuart-Menzies of Te Puna (near Tauranga) released to the press the results of his examinations of samples taken from the Ngatea circle, things really began to pop. According to Mr Stuart-Menzies, the scrub-weed within the affected area had been killed by. Mr Stuart-Menzies had been called in to examine samples by Mr Harvey Cooke of Tauranga.

The horticulturalist elaborated: "Manuka from the circle was radio-active and had been cooked instantaneously from the inside outward. Every ounce of moisture in the plants had been instantly vaporized; they are bone dry and brittle. The energy received has reduced the pith to black carbon without the outsides showing any signs of burning."
Mr Stuart-Menzies added that he knew, "no earthly source of energy which could produce these effects; some outside object appears to have landed on the spot, and in taking off, emitted the energy which cooked the plants."

www.ufocusnz.org.nz...

What would be the reason the radioactivity was not discovered in the first testing ?
How crude could could tests be when testing for radio-active presence at the site ?

reply to post by azureskys


Well considering NZ is a non nuclear nation, I can't imagine that they had much portable equipment other than perhaps a geiger counter onsite.

That part of the story reads like the Roswell event - first a story comes out that a UFO has crashed and then later it is rebuked and it is 'just a weather balloon' The NZ story went in the opposite order though - first it wasn't, then it was.

I am of the belief that the area that this occurred had trouble growing anything at all for quite sometime after the incident. From what I can remember, the old timer who showed us the spot said that nothing grew there until the land was cleared and the soil cultivated.

reply to post by markosity1973


Those photos are a great addition to your OP.
It helps to put the probable size of an unknown object in better perspective

reply to post by markosity1973


Well it did get plenty of media attention once a few "names"
came into the picture.

Yes, this is comparable to Roswell and is just as intriguing.

Thank you for this unsolved mystery.

An interesting note regarding the radiation and the question of the 'crude' measurements;

In a press release dated October 14, Mr R.Chidnall joined Mr Stuart-Menzies in repudiating the Minister's findings. Mr Chidnall said he agreed that saprophytic fungus was present, but this was a secondary state following death and did not explain how the plants died. When he examined the material he found "a set of states" which he could not fit into any ordinary pattern. Under the microscope, considerable differences were found in the dead wood from the affected area to that found in other areas. He also found that the soil from the circle would not support growth. "I sowed seeds in soil which I collected from the affected area, and they sprouted and died within 48 hours they just keeled over and died!" Seeds from the same packet planted in soil from outside the circle were still growing naturally, he said. Mr Stuart-Menzies agreed that he could see no evidence that the manuka was killed by spray or fungus. Saprophytic fungus lived only on dead material and did not kill. He added that Geiger counter readings taken within a week of the circle being discovered registered radiation in the thicker pieces of manuka.

As I thought, they were using geiger counters. The interesting thing to note is that radiation was found in thicker pieces of wood only.

Now I admit I am no radiation expert, so maybe someone can shed some light for me on this. All I really know that all radiation has a half life and some can dissipate quite quickly.

Can someone out there tell me if radiation with a short half life would disperse faster in thin twigs as opposed to say the trunk of the tree i,e would the trunk, being thicker absorb more radiation and therefore hold it for longer?

If the answer is yes, then that probably explains why the original samples came back negative - they would have only taken small samples of the twigs and tested them. If the answer is no, can anyone explain why that would happen?

reply to post by markosity1973


www.epa.gov...
www.world-nuclear.org...
en.wikipedia.org...
www.ratical.org...
here a few links on radiation and half lives srill looking for your radiation to mass answer

reply to post by ronthealien

Thanks