Oz X-Files - The second batch

A few weeks ago, I uploaded (with the permission of the National Archives of Australia), searchable PDF files containing over 10,000 pages of Australian UFO documents and gave some highlights from that collection in my thread Oz X-Files : “authenticated sighting”, “appear to be inexplicable”, USA “very interested"

In that thread, I pointed out that there were additional files that remained to be digitised at a fairly modest cost.

Since I posted that thread, veteran Australian ufologist Keith Basterfield has found a sponsor (Melbourne researcher Paul Dean) willing to pay for 16 further UFO files to be digitised.

The National Archives of Australia has again kindly given permission for these further files to be made available as searchable PDFs upon them being digitised.



The first 8 of those further files have now been digitized by the National Archives of Australia and I've converted them to searchable PDFs. These files contain a little over 1,000 pages.

Keith Basterfield has kindly indicated that he is happy for me to post a link to these further files:

we.tl...





Keith Basterfield has recently posted about some of these further files on his informative blog:

ufos-scientificresearch.blogspot.com.au...

ufos-scientificresearch.blogspot.com.au...

ufos-scientificresearch.blogspot.com.au...

ufos-scientificresearch.blogspot.com.au...

ufos-scientificresearch.blogspot.com.au...




(The other files being digitised due to the efforts of Keith Basterfield and Paul Dean should be available within a month).

reply to post by IsaacKoi

Oustanding, as usual.
Nom, Nom, Nom!


Edit to add:
This one is spooky...

The constable’s statement told how he and a colleague had observed a “strange light which appeared to be following the Police Vehicle.” It was coloured amber, which changed to blue and back to amber frequently. It seemed to follow them for 2 miles, moved ahead of their vehicle, then stopped 1 mile in front. It then appeared to dim and go out, but reappeared very brightly in an area where there were no roads, and the terrain was very steep and rocky. The constable stated that it was not a star. The duration of their observation was about 6 minutes.

Imagine being followed, then it moves ahead, stops and "goes out"... would you go down that road? Of course the official explanations are (ahem), official.

The RAAF Director of Public Relations wrote to the constable “…the investigating team believes that the most probable cause of your sighting was a phenomenon known as “ball lightning” or “kugelblitz.” Mr Stewart, meanwhile was informed by the RAAF that the most probable cause for his separate observation was “Venus.”

Oh yah? I didn't know that venus changed color between amber and blue, turned off and on, and waited down the road for you.

Ball lightning doesn't last for "six minutes".

Ball lightning?

Originally posted by intrptr
Nom, Nom, Nom!

Thanks for the kind words. I have to admit that I had to look them up
www.urbandictionary.com...

I am usually fairly passive and silently star/flag posts I like without comment if I have nothing to add. But you just keep on investing your time, digging this stuff up and putting it out there for collective study. As I said in your NZ UFO posts, I am still concentrating on our own UK cases. However one day I may get round to using this material for a post on UFOs Down Under. Except of course you've already done it!

Thanks again Isaac.

Originally posted by mirageman
you just keep on investing your time, digging this stuff up and putting it out there for collective study.

It's only in the last year or two that I've realised just how much material (ranging from official documents to interesting articles) is relatively inaccessible and difficult to obtain/search.

The more material I obtain, the more obvious are the numerous gaps in the available material.

Fortunately, ways of filling in those gaps are becoming increasingly obvious as well...

reply to post by IsaacKoi


Firstly I hope you forgive me for de-railing the thread here but would like to take this off at a tangent because there is a lot of literature from the past that seems missing (and my memories only go back to the 1970s).

I remember there was a magazine called "The Unexplained" when I was still at school. I used to waste/invest my pocket money on this each week. I had a large collection built up by the early 1980s, but my collection has long since been discarded after I left my parents home in the 1990s. Perhaps it was fairly simplistic by today's standards but it inspired my interest in the UFO topic (and other strange phenomena). However unless someone still has the library of this magazine and makes it available digitally then I will never get the chance to re-read it. I have no idea how old you are Isaac, but maybe you are familiar with "The Unexplained" back in the day?



I have recently found 6 issues of "Sightings" magazine, a short lived British publication in the mid 1990s whilst tipping out some rubbish. I have only glanced through it but it is interesting to see how things were viewed 2 decades ago. I could scan and re-produce these publications but the copyright issue is still a very grey area, now that the publishing company no longer exist.

That all said there are magazines like "New Scientist" and "Popular Science" who have made their archives available on Google Books free of charge. A few articles on UFOs are available to view.

And for deep research they can be VERY useful. For instance whilst looking into the Rendlesham Incident in 1980 I discovered an early 1981 article in "New Scientist" as below. This was almost 3 years before it became a news headline in October of 1983.



As to an interpretation of the article and how it relates to Rendlesham, that is another matter and is open for debate.

However there seems an awful lot of material that we are in danger of losing at a time when reproducing and distributing documentation has never been cheaper and easier.


Kind Regards

Originally posted by mirageman
Firstly I hope you forgive me for de-railing the thread here

No problem at all. I don't view discussing wider issues as to recovering and sharing ufological material derailing the thread.

I have no idea how old you are Isaac, but maybe you are familiar with "The Unexplained" back in the day?

It used to contain some interesting articles, including (if I recall correctly) quite a few by Jenny Randles. I think some of its contents were republished in a few coffee-table books. I'll have to have a look at the books I've got in mind.

I could scan and re-produce these publications but the copyright issue is still a very grey area, now that the publishing company no longer exist.

I'm in a similar position with some Quest publications, now that Quest no longer exists...

there seems an awful lot of material that we are in danger of losing at a time when reproducing and distributing documentation has never been cheaper and easier.

But at least these days we can do more about it than a decade or two ago...

With a bit of determined and co-ordinated effort, a heck of a lot of interesting UFO material could be made available online in a fairly short period of time.

Perhaps either determination or co-ordination are too much to hope for within ufology.

Hello issac
did you by any chance find out any more hints on the strange church of only bishops?

I wonder if the Velentich case is mentioned ?
they still wouldnt talk about the Orion P3 they had out looking for him...
what did it perhaps detect?
i worry the best stuff will remain Classified and well get the shaft with these "disclosures.."...

Originally posted by stirling
did you by any chance find out any more hints on the strange church of only bishops?

I wonder if the Velentich case is mentioned ?

Nothing on the former. In relation to the Valentich case, there is nothing in these files but there was quite a bit of documentation on that incident in the first batch - see Section J of my first thread on the Australian files.

i worry the best stuff will remain Classified and well get the shaft with these "disclosures.."...

Well, there's certainly a lot more material to come from various countries and various agencies.

UFOs starting to get some media coverage

www.heraldsun.com.au...