UFO sightings and our own X-files

Stuart (yes, apparently bereft of a surname) of Waramanga, was one of the few to fess up with a strange sighting - "a single bright white plasma orb the size of a beach ball", about 30 metres above the ground that he watched fly towards him "before turning abruptly at right angles, uniformly pulsating and reducing in size before vanishing into thin air". Heck.

However, there was a time when UFO reports weren't so thin on the ground (or in the air for that matter). Fuelled by the fervour of the space race, UFO sightings in Australia peaked between the 1950s and 1970s and were so prevalent that the federal government kept a secret dossier of reports. In the interest of national security, the Feds even assigned officers to investigate some of the more compelling cases.

The Department of Air received so many reports in the 1950s that the top brass developed a pro-forma questionnaire for eyewitnesses to fill out. But a word of warning, trawling through these files (now held by the National Archives of Australia) is like diving headlong into a rabbit warren (or should that be black hole!). While most files, many stamped 'Confidential or 'Restricted', include names and addresses of eyewitnesses, some reports have pages partially or completely redacted. Little wonder conspiracy theorists point to such censoring to argue that the government must be hiding something.

One of the top secret 'UFO Files' reveals that between 1960 and 1971, the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) assessed a staggering 595 UFO reports. As you'd expect, the vast majority (93 per cent) were "explainable by present scientific knowledge", but for reasons much broader than you'd expect. Sure there were usual suspects like the brightly shining Venus, passing satellites, weather balloons and meteorite showers, but also more unusual explanations such as a "flare left over from the previous day's fireworks display" to "'debris airborne by a willy willy". Then there's the "12 objects flying high in pairs dropping white substances" reported on August 8, 1961 at Meekatharra in Western Australia which was dismissed as "migrating balloon spiders". Really.

Of the remaining reports, 6 per cent of eyewitnesses "did not provide sufficient information to permit proper analysis and evaluation", leaving just 1 per cent attributed to "unknown causes". Although a small number, no doubt more than enough for true believers to hang their tin foil hats on.

At a recent public thinktank to complement the archives' exhibition Out of This World: Australia in the Space Age, local space luminary Mike Dinn, who was deputy station director and in charge of operations at the ACT's NASA-run Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station during the Apollo missions, divulged another possible reason for UFO reports from the Canberra region in the late 1960s.

"The staff at Honeysuckle regularly honed their tracking skills on the Super Constellation [NASA 421] aircraft flown out from the US," he recalls. "It was very hard to track an aircraft, much harder than a rocket, so a light would sometimes be used on the belly of the aircraft to help locate it as it flew back and forth over Canberra."

Hamish Lindsay, another Canberran who worked at Honeysuckle during the mid to late 1960s explains more. "I remember Canberra residents rang us in droves querying if this bright light ranging back and forth south of the city was a UFO or flying saucer," he says.

Staff at the nearby Tidbinbilla Tracking Station also had flying saucers on their mind in the mid-1960s. In their paper presented to the Second World Space Congress in 2002, Kerrie Dougherty of the Powerhouse Museum and John Sarkissian of the CSIRO reveal details of the day in July 1965 that while tracking the Mariner 4 around Mars, operations at the tracking station were temporarily interrupted by a passing UFO.

"When the spacecraft was due to make its closest approach to Mars, Tidbinbilla asked the civil aviation authorities to divert all aircraft in the area that might come between that station's antenna and the signal from Mars.

"Much to the surprise of the Tidbinbilla staff, just at the time when Mariner 4 passed behind Mars, they received their first ever call on a special direct line from Canberra Airport, asking if they were experiencing interferences from a UFO! Later the object was identified as an errant weather balloon." Phew.

So what about some of the other reports around Canberra? Well on a per capita basis, if the archives' UFO files are any guide, our civic leaders ought to consider changing our moniker from the 'Bush Capital' to the 'UFO Capital'. By night, we seem to have been plagued by all manner of strange objects from "a bright yellow metallic object" hovering near Pialligo (1965, and no it wasn't an aircraft)" to a "blue-green mothership" buzzing the city (1975). Then there are the more regular sightings of "daytime discs" "and "glittering balls of light travelling at terrific speed". The mind boggles.

As to Stuart of Waramanga and his peculiar 'plasma orb', unfortunately the government no longer assesses (officially, anyway) UFO reports, so we may never know its origins. One thing is for sure though, it's unlikely to be migrating balloon spiders.

Eyebrow-raising sketches of flying saucers and detailed descriptions of strange lights in the sky aren't the only historic gems hidden in the government's so-called 'UFO Files'. A fossick through the files also reveals many tell-all 'ministerials', official government responses to letters submitted by the public, a bureaucratic process many contemporary Canberra public servants will be all too familiar with.

One of these letters indicates just how widespread paranoia about UFOs and aliens were during the height of the space race. In 1966, 13-year-old Coralie Nash wrote to the then prime minister Harold Holt asking that 'he give deep consideration to the fact that many spaceships and nests had been discovered ... and of the thousands of people that disappear each year without trace".

In Coralie's two-page handwritten letter, which is currently on display at the National Archives of Australia Out of This World: Australia in the Space Age exhibition, the concerned teenager urges that observatories around the country be "kept on guard all night and that people be warned about the danger that they could be in".

While the PM himself didn't reply, the archives also has on display the official response by F.W. Jennings, his private secretary, reassuring her that most UFO sightings had a "logical'' explanation.

Your akubra-clad columnist has tried in vain to track down Coralie, who would now be 68. So far, I've had no luck, but even those bearing the same name want to confirm she wasn't abducted by aliens.

As for Harold Holt, well I'm sure some conspiracy theorists would argue he should have taken heed of Coralie's advice, for, of course, later the next year he sadly vanished without trace while taking a swim at Cheviot Beach in Victoria.

Clue: Choo choo

Degree of difficulty: Medium

Last week: Congratulations to Andrew Hobson of Campbell who was the first reader to correctly identify last week's photo as a statue at the Canberra Murukan Temple on Beasley Street in Torrens. The Canberra Saiva Temple and Educational Association runs the temple, which serves as a pillar of the Hindu community, providing religious and educational services to the neighbourhood.

How to enter: Email your guess along with your name and suburb to tym@iinet.net.au The first email sent after 10am, Saturday March 6, 2021, wins a double pass to Dendy, the Home of Quality Cinema.

Today's mystery blue-painted tree isn't the only unexpected blue object around our region. Check out this native worm, recently spotted by Mike Bremers on the track between Thredbo Top Station and Dead Horse Gap.

Often mistaken by city-dwellers as a 'small snake' or a 'weird leech' the eye-catching worm is a Blue Planarian (Caenoplana coerulea), a type of flat worm that only comes out after rain.

According to a spokesperson for the Australian Museum, "Blue Planarians use their viscous slime trails to trap small animals like slaters and millipedes. The planarian cruises along old trails and drowns any victims in slime before sucking out their insides with a mouth located on its belly. If this all sounds a bit ugly, consider that the planarian digestive system has only one orifice - all wastes must exit the same way the food went in, via the mouth." Lovely.

Still on the subject of slime, many readers including Russell Wenholz of Holt, report they have Stinkhorn fungus, complete with its foul-smelling sticky spore mass, knowns as gleba, popping up in their backyard this year.

"Tim, no need to go all the way to Tidbinbilla (The Mystery of Square Top Mountain, February 27), this charmer showed up in my wife's garden this summer, all of five paces from our back stairs," reveals Russell.

CONTACT TIM: Email: tym@iinet.net.au or Twitter: @TimYowie or write c/- The Canberra Times, 9 Pirie St, Fyshwick