- 2 days ago
On 6 April 1966 in the Australian suburb of Westall hundreds watched as a strange object hovered overhead landed then lifted off and vanished Witnesses described it as low flying silvergrey and shiny shaped like a lsquocup turned upside down on a saucer and accompanied by five light aircraft Afraid of being ridiculed many witnesses kept the secret Some are still angry about not being believed.
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Phenomena TV https://rumble.com/c/PhenomenaTV
Mistery, Conspiracy, Secrets & Lies https://rumble.com/c/c-7695975
My two main channels:
Phenomena TV https://rumble.com/c/PhenomenaTV
Mistery, Conspiracy, Secrets & Lies https://rumble.com/c/c-7695975
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TVTranscript
00:10Soon after my son was born I began to reflect on a story I'd heard many years before. It was
00:17a story about the power adults hold over children. The stories we tell them and the stories like
00:26this one that they are never meant to hear.
00:40The 6th of April 1966 started just like any other day in the city of Melbourne.
00:51Then something very strange appeared in the sky above the suburb of Westall. It hasn't been explained to this day.
00:58This boy came running and said Mr. Greenwood, Mr. Greenwood, there's these things in the sky, there's these things in
01:03the sky.
01:04We looked up and we just saw this saucer type thing taking off.
01:09It wasn't a plane, it wasn't a balloon, it was nothing like that.
01:11A lot of the kids took off towards where it seemed to go.
01:15All the students were just running all over the place, hysterical.
01:20Westall High School as the teaching situation ceased.
01:24My girlfriend and I sat on the fence, climbed the fence, the school boundary, and we were crying thinking it
01:30was the end of the world.
01:45This is a mystery story that has, as it's setting, a school and most of the players were school children.
01:56They had this extraordinary experience, which they then tried to share with adults.
02:03And a lot of them had a lot of trouble doing that. They were disbelieved, almost stigmatised.
02:10I think like a lot of other people, I just shut up about it because of the ridicule.
02:14And it was everybody. You know, you were a kid, you were making it up.
02:18So you just be quiet and in your mind you just think, I know what I saw.
02:21And no one's ever going to shake me from that. I know what I saw.
02:25I really felt for them as people who had this incredible experience and yet they haven't been able to make
02:32sense of it.
02:42This is the biggest mass UFO sighting in Australia.
02:47Yet it seems to have been suppressed, deliberately kept out of the public view.
02:53Like the witnesses, I want to find out why.
03:01Whatever material was created about this story has simply been buried.
03:08And yet this memory has survived.
03:11And it only has to be slightly pricked.
03:16And it's like the floodgates open and all the memories come rushing out.
03:21I was precipitating various chemicals in order to make crystals.
03:27And I just happened to be looking out the window, thinking how to fudge my science report.
03:32What I saw directly south was something that I'd never seen before.
03:37We were out playing sport on the oval.
03:40One of the kids yelled out, look, look up in the sky, you know, it's flying saucers.
03:43And I remember we all looked up and it really was a flying saucer.
03:50I mean, from what you imagine, a flying saucer, it was a round silver disc.
03:56And it seemed to be very low over the school.
04:00And I remember kids screaming and running inside.
04:02The student came in, was hysterical, leaned up against a sliding door, screaming, there's
04:09a flying saucer in the oval.
04:12And, of course, everybody started to head towards the door.
04:15And the teacher said, sit down, it's not recessed yet.
04:19And a few minutes later, the bell went off.
04:25Everyone started moving, like a whole lot of zebras being terrified by crocodiles.
04:31I went where the hood went.
04:49Barbara Robbins was the chemistry teacher at the time.
04:53And she just grabbed a camera and started clicking.
05:06I went into the staff room.
05:10Because I knew I wouldn't have a chance to have a cup of tea any other time, I went to
05:15get a cup of tea.
05:16And then because I was a smoker, and this is something that has stayed with me for 42 years.
05:23Yes.
05:23I lit up a cigarette, and so I don't know how much I delayed before I went outside.
05:31Everyone just took off out into the oval.
05:35In time to see it lifting off from the oval, it was probably, I don't know, 50 feet or more
05:40in the air at that stage.
05:41I see Andrew Greenwood, the science teacher, coming towards me, and he said, did you see it? Did you see
05:48it?
05:48And he pointed up in the air, and I said, no, see what?
05:51I have a very, very clear picture of him, and I remember almost exactly what he said.
05:58And he said, it was up in the sky.
06:01It moved at incredible speeds.
06:03It hovered.
06:06It seemed to go away, and there seemed to be light, light planes.
06:12And he thought, Cessna, he thought they were actually checking it out from the Roman airport.
06:18Yeah.
06:18And they were circling around it.
06:20It sort of stopped dead, and stopped dead in the air.
06:25And then it just sort of started descending straight down.
06:28And so it got down about halfway up that gum tree or above the goal post, and sat there for
06:34a while.
06:35And then it just sort of lifted straight up, and then just took straight off.
06:39This thing went down behind the trees, then it came up, and it was like it had become aware of
06:44these planes coming in,
06:45and it just went woof, and just left them like they were standing still.
06:48And then it went across to an area called the Grange, which was a bit of a pine plantation behind
06:54the school.
06:59Because I walk around with the Westall story inside my head, as soon as I enter the landscape of Westall,
07:05out it comes, like a three-dimensional children's storybook that pops up out of the soil.
07:12It's like I've entered my favourite children's story.
07:24The Grange was a special place for Westall students.
07:28It's where they went on cross-country runs,
07:31but it's also where childhood games and hunting for lizards gave way to illicit smoking and steamy liaisons.
07:51It's going the wrong way now.
07:53Let's be back here.
08:00This flying saucer thing came out of the blue like a bolt.
08:05It's intertwined with romping around down at the Grange,
08:08out of sight of the school authorities or their parents.
08:13It has that sense of being involved with something dangerous or clandestine,
08:20and they were part of it.
08:28A lot of the kids took off towards where it seemed to go,
08:32and it disappeared down behind the trees.
08:34So we all got through this fence and ran towards where it had appeared to land.
08:42Tanya and I, and this other girl, we were over the fence.
08:46Tanya was in the lead, and we ran towards where it was coming down.
08:51I lost sight of Tanya. She was in front of me.
08:56A couple of girls got there faster than me. I was a bit slow.
08:59And they actually passed out.
09:02And apparently it did land because when we got there,
09:05there was a great big round patch of like flattened yellow,
09:11almost burnt, although I'm a bit sketchy on that.
09:13I can't remember if it was really burnt or whether it was just flattened,
09:16but it was sort of yellow and the grass was all flattened in a swirly sort of a pattern.
09:21Before I got there, the disc came back up again.
09:25So I stopped chasing it.
09:27We looked up and we just saw this saucer type thing taking off,
09:33and it seemed to turn side on and just disappear into thin air.
09:37Well, what about your friend Tanya?
09:39I believe she did see it on the ground.
09:42She did see it on the ground?
09:43So I was given to believe, yes.
09:46But I went back to school and Tanya went back to school
09:51and basically had gone all to pieces.
09:56There was definitely an ambulance on the oval
09:58and I was told that she'd been taken away in the ambulance
10:01and that was the last time I ever saw her.
10:04Wow.
10:05She was just gone and she never came back to school.
10:13Tanya wasn't the only person who saw the craft on the ground.
10:17Before they headed over to the Grange,
10:20Victor Zakrusny says two objects landed in a grassy paddock where a street is now.
10:26All the kids were hanging on the fence there.
10:28There's quite a few kids there.
10:29It's a high fence and I got up the top there and all you could see is two discs,
10:36one there and one bit further away, probably three metres apart.
10:39I could hear somebody in the background saying stay away, don't jump the fence
10:44and so I told bugger I'm going over the fence.
10:47The craft probably would have been about there
10:50and there was another one set back a bit on an angle,
10:55probably just about there.
10:58There's a few kids walking around there and I was the only one on this side.
11:03I got up to it to want to touch it and it was,
11:07well you could feel a heat about a metre way coming from.
11:10It was pretty warm or hot and within a minute or so it just,
11:14both of them just lifted up at the same time about this height
11:20and I was seeing what, oh that was breathtaking watching that
11:23and then it just gradually lifted, lifted up and then went off towards the pines.
11:29I did a rough sketch of it.
11:31Wow, look at that. This is the view from underneath.
11:34That's underneath.
11:35There's no seams, no joins, it's just smooth metal.
11:40Normally an aircraft has sheet metal, pipe rivets or all that sort of stuff there.
11:45This looked like coming out of a mould or something like that,
11:48all one smooth piece of metal.
11:50It was just incredible.
11:52It's just something like you see in the movies.
11:54But this is more than just cinema.
11:56If we look at the possibilities for this story,
12:00they are extraordinary.
12:02Talking about the possibility of life coming from another place
12:06and just appearing one day in their midst.
12:09And then leaving again and leaving everybody with so many questions.
12:13But with a new openness to the beyond.
12:20If I'd been at Westall on that day, I would like to have raced after that flying saucer
12:26and gotten so close to it to have held it in my hands.
12:34But the adults at Westall High School saw it differently.
12:38That afternoon our principal called a special assembly and told us all not to talk about it.
12:47All I know is the whole school was told off.
12:50The headmaster says all you kids are nuts.
12:53It's a weather balloon.
12:55Don't talk about it.
12:57I was prepped to tell the students that what they'd seen didn't exist.
13:04We weren't allowed to leave the school, at least I wasn't.
13:07My job was to walk up and down the corridors and make sure that all students were in their rooms.
13:13I was walking back from the West End.
13:16There was confrontation between Mr. Sambleby, Barbara Robbins and a man I'd never seen before.
13:24I thought it was a police uniform, but it was just dark blue.
13:28It was demanded that she hand over, not the film, but the entire camera.
13:34I was near the gate and the police had arrived.
13:37There were journalists outside.
13:40The police had been caught in to keep the journalists away.
13:42We were told that we weren't allowed to speak to the media in school grounds.
13:48After school finished, there was a TV crew outside the school grounds,
13:54so we undertook an interview with them.
13:57Everyone took off onto the oval.
13:59Now I can't remember whether it was a principal or a school representative
14:05that came out and ordered us to go home and the film crew to leave.
14:11And I'd actually been giving an interview to Channel 9
14:13and the policeman actually walked up to them and said stop filming
14:17and you go back into the school ground.
14:20Okay, so that's what I did.
14:22I was 12 and a half years old.
14:23Because I was a mischievous sort of person,
14:26I was always getting into trouble.
14:27I had detention for actually appearing on the show
14:31and then I got detention again at a later date
14:33after my picture and story was in the Dandenong Journal.
14:38So I didn't go unpunished, but it was worth it.
14:47I now had two new leads to follow, Channel 9 and the Dandenong Journal.
14:53I rang Channel 9 first.
14:57They searched for a flying saucer story and there it was.
15:10Now all I have to do is find the can with the matching number.
15:34But oddly, there was nothing there.
15:38I was absolutely devastated and nobody had any idea where it had gone.
15:49It's very frustrating, but the good news is the Dandenong Journal does still exist.
15:55And I'm told it's here in the library.
15:59It's the only written account I've heard of from the period.
16:01So it's really precious.
16:13What the heck was that?
16:17I stole high saucers.
16:21Something obviously happened.
16:25Some people apparently didn't want the kids talking about it.
16:30And that raises all sorts of questions.
16:34Why couldn't it have been discussed?
16:36Why couldn't it have been talked about openly?
16:38And why couldn't anybody find any more information about what it was?
16:44The headmaster, Frank Zambelby, is a key part of the story.
16:50He's passed away, but I hope his children, Max and Gail, can shed some light on his behaviour.
17:01Hello. Shane here. Anybody home?
17:02Hello.
17:03How are you?
17:04I'm good. How are you?
17:05Max?
17:06Nice to meet you.
17:07Hi. Nice to meet you.
17:08Thank you very much. Thank you.
17:13He played 50 games for the Hawthorne Football Club.
17:17He was a half-back flanker, and in those days, half-back flankers ran in straight lines.
17:22And that's what he did.
17:24He was pretty black and white, and he had a very strong sense of right and wrong.
17:30If it didn't fit in with what he believed, then he found it quite difficult.
17:36And this thing would have been seen as something that was disrupting the smooth operation of the school.
17:45And he would have been a sceptic as well.
17:48I mean, he didn't believe in supernatural things.
17:52He believed in the real life, didn't he?
17:57You know, when we were kids, there was a picture on the wall of a Roman soldier standing, holding his
18:04spear,
18:05and the lava was all falling down from Pompeii.
18:09And people in the background were all crouching and running.
18:13And Dad said, see, he's standing there doing his duty.
18:16And, you know, I mean, as children, we had to learn that discipline was important, respect, all those things, all
18:25the old values.
18:26And, yeah, he found it really hard as things changed to, he was pretty judgemental.
18:34Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho!
18:36There was plenty for Frank Sandelby to be judgemental about.
18:44In the 1960s, rebellion at home and on the streets brought many young people into conflict with the establishment.
18:52Schools were run like the military, and teachers demanded respect and obedience.
18:59Westall High was no exception.
19:02I tried to contact some of the teachers, but many have passed away.
19:06As far as I know, only the science teacher, Andrew Greenwood, saw the object in the air.
19:13Although he's spoken with me privately, he refuses to go on the public record.
19:19Several teachers dismissed the whole thing as mass hysteria.
19:23The response left students feeling confused and conflicted.
19:28Some are still searching for answers.
19:30I want to find some sort of proof that this happened so we don't keep on, you know, getting called
19:46silly people.
19:50You know, no one's ever wanted to know the details before.
19:53They just think I'm stupid and, you know, they don't want to know the story.
20:02They just, I said, I've seen UFOs or flying saucers and they say,
20:08yeah, sure, what drugs were you on that day?
20:11And, you know, I was 13 years old.
20:15I was at school in the daytime.
20:19I wasn't on any drugs.
20:26But, you know, they're not supposed to be.
20:28They're not supposed to be.
20:29They're not supposed to be.
20:30So I'd like you to visualize the area that we have discussed before.
20:36You're in the classroom.
20:38You're with Mr. Greenwood, who was the teacher there.
20:44There's a little fellow comes running around and says,
20:47they're flying saucers outside, flying saucers outside.
20:52everybody laughed and Mr Greenwood said come on then let's have a look. See
21:00yourself running down the island.
21:14We're all affected by our experiences that aren't ever properly acknowledged or
21:19accepted. As a boy I was living in a fairly unhappy home. My own father had
21:28died so my mother had remarried and had given me a stepfather that I'd never
21:34asked for. I was quite powerless and no one really seemed to understand what I
21:43was experiencing as a child. I never really had anyone talk to me about it.
21:48Just having it acknowledged that what I was going through was real that would have
21:53been a start.
21:55One, two, three.
21:57Even though I know it's true, the more I try to see it again the harder it becomes I think.
22:08I can see bodies but I can't see people, faces you know. But I can still see the trees and
22:15the things. It was, yeah.
22:21The feelings don't go away, they just get buried and they sort of fester a little bit.
22:35I saw the classroom for the first time and then I saw heads bobbing, walking across the oval towards
22:46the end of the school ground and then there they were. Still not 100% clear but I know what
22:55they are.
22:55They're UFOs.
23:02If they were UFOs, there should be people around the area who can corroborate what the students saw.
23:10A headmaster might be able to shut down a high school but surely not a whole suburb.
23:17Within days of delivering my flyers, I'm contacted by a new witness, Paul Smith, who used to work on a
23:24property
23:25next door to the Grange.
23:27We were loading up for market and as we were pulling the carrots up, I looked up and I was
23:32facing the object in the sky.
23:36And I just thought, oh somebody's got some way of projecting a film of something into the sky.
23:45I didn't believe that it was really happening. But my boss turned around and he saw it and we stood
23:54there looking at it for several minutes.
23:57A few moments later, the children came over from the high school and they noticed us, they saw us and
24:05they sort of took a while to make up their mind
24:07whether they would come onto the property realising it's private property.
24:11Yes.
24:11And they decided they'd come in anyway and they did. They ran straight over, straight over the market garden and
24:19they crossed and walked down here to this corner.
24:22After a while, trucks turned up with, it looked like army trucks.
24:27Right.
24:28And there would have been about 20 guys got out.
24:32About how long after the object had vanished in the trees?
24:37Oh, I think it was only 20 minutes, which is not a long time.
24:42How did you know they were from the army?
24:44Well, they were khaki coloured trucks, the covered in patches, you know, sort of, that they, to hide.
24:54Like camouflage?
24:55Camouflage truck, yeah. And it was the long ones that carried quite a few people and a couple of jeeps.
25:02So a couple of trucks?
25:04Yeah, yeah.
25:04And a couple of jeeps?
25:05Yeah.
25:06And about 20 men?
25:09In, in uniforms?
25:10Yeah, yeah.
25:11And the uniforms were what sort of uniforms?
25:13Uh, just khaki coloured uniforms.
25:15Just khaki?
25:16No other, do I remember any other sort of?
25:18Not that I can remember.
25:19Colours or?
25:20No.
25:21I went looking for a military expert.
25:24If the army was able to turn up in just 20 minutes, where could they possibly have come from?
25:30It's quite evident that there was no deployable troops available in Melbourne at the time.
25:36Um, the main units, uh, were all logistic.
25:39Uh, the supply battalions and so forth at places like Broad Meadows.
25:42There were lots of, uh, citizen military forces, uh, today's equivalent of the army reserve, part-time units.
25:49But they couldn't have responded, uh, so rapidly, uh, and nor could they have responded in such a large number.
25:56I've come to the conclusion that the first people to respond to the incident at Westall would have been civilians
26:02of some sort,
26:03quasi-civilians, uh, probably working for defence, uh, and probably wearing the sort of work dress that civilians working for,
26:12say, the Department of Supply, say, the research and development, uh, establishments over the period,
26:17the sort of work dress that those personnel wore.
26:22I discovered that other people in uniform were seen in the area on the day of the sighting.
26:30The
26:31Leir's Medju went to the grange with his younger sister, but they saw what seemed to be a different unit.
26:37We hid behind this tree, but fortunately this tree, the branches came down to the ground.
26:42Here we are, crouched down on our knees, and we can only look every so often as this tractor came
26:48around.
26:49He was on guard, Julie. This was a farmer who's decided to help out.
26:54We observed two army trucks, two men in the camouflage, and two men in blue uniforms.
27:02We better cover this area.
27:04And it appeared that a, uh, soldier was using a metal mine detector.
27:11He's walking around, sweeping back and forth.
27:14Keep down. They'll see you.
27:16The next time I see them, they turned and they started kicking violently at the ground.
27:21The two officers decide then, time to come back.
27:24They come back to the truck, and they were gone.
27:26And then we could enter the paddock.
27:28Liz! Liz!
27:29We had no idea what we'd all walked into.
27:32We didn't know what those army men were doing.
27:34And all I can say, it was just, what is this?
27:38Liz!
27:42To have the army there and all the rest of it, it was something important.
27:48They certainly were not Australian, because Australians were not using camouflage uniforms
27:52in those days, in the mid-60s.
27:54Nor would they have been British.
27:56But the description of the uniforms certainly matches those worn by the United States Air Force
28:01in the mid-1960s.
28:04There were American military and intelligence personnel in Australia in 1966 as part of the Vietnam War effort.
28:12The Cold War between the USA and the Soviet Union was in full swing, extending across the world and even
28:19into outer space.
28:22We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things.
28:27Not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
28:31The space race between the superpowers fueled the public imagination at all levels.
28:37Flying saucers have invaded our planet.
28:40Washington, London, Paris.
28:49The fascination with flying saucers persisted all over the world.
28:54Australia was no exception.
28:57Well, so far I haven't seen anything even vaguely resembling a flying saucer or even a flying cigar.
29:04But thousands of people, in fact millions, do believe they exist.
29:08What do you think they are?
29:09They are real anyway.
29:11They come from the other planets.
29:14Some of them might come from the centre of the Earth.
29:17I haven't seen one close up yet.
29:19This is what I'm looking forward to one day.
29:22You took a step towards the figures and the object.
29:25We used to invite people who reported sightings to talk about the experience.
29:31Because if the sighting was a dramatic one, they would feel, you know, I just need to talk to somebody.
29:36But if I discuss it with my friends, they say, what have you been drinking?
29:41But they needed to talk to somebody who would take them seriously.
29:45Although society members tried to investigate at Westall, they came up against a wall of silence.
29:52All they can now find in their files is a couple of photographs and a sighting report filled in at
29:58the time by one of my student witnesses, Joy Tai.
30:03They also went to Marebin Airport to look for the pilots of the aircraft that apparently chased the UFO, but
30:10nobody came forward.
30:15I decided to do my own investigation.
30:18I contacted a retired air traffic controller to find out how a UFO and several light planes fly so close
30:26to each other without a report being made.
30:29Who was responsible for controlling the airspace?
30:32Moorabbin Tower was responsible for the area within a five-mile radius of Moorabbin and up to 3,000 feet.
30:44And above that, it was the responsibility of Essendon approach.
30:50If you were in a tower, you had the aircraft in sight all the time.
30:56Five aircraft on either the airspace, five by the way, in raw daylight, they should have been able to see.
31:04They may have found something that they thought shouldn't be made public and therefore hushed up.
31:15There is evidence that the American government wanted to stifle debate about UFOs.
31:21They set up a committee to objectively investigate UFOs, but a leaked memo revealed that the whole investigation was a
31:30sham.
31:32The government's most vocal critic was the top atmospheric scientist, Professor James MacDonald.
31:39Why has the government taken this attitude, in your opinion?
31:41As a result of the extremely heavy wave of sightings in 1952, the CIA and Air Force became so concerned
31:48over the sheer number of reports
31:53that were tying up American intelligence channels that they wanted to get this signal out of the system,
31:58ask the Air Force, the CIA asked the Air Force for a debunking policy.
32:02The literal wording was to debunk the flying saucers, to decrease public interest in the UFOs.
32:09Regulations were promulgated very shortly that made it a crime punishable with, I think, its $10,000 fine
32:15and or 10 years in prison to release any information at airbase level on UFOs.
32:21And as a result of that, nothing resembling any scientific investigation has been going on in the past 15 years.
32:27In Australia, we followed the American policy of ridiculing UFOs, so I started searching for other sightings that might have
32:35happened around the same time as Westall.
32:40I discovered that four days before Westall, a witness took a photo from his backyard in Melbourne that matched descriptions
32:48of the object above Westall.
32:50Then, just two days before Westall, Ron Sullivan was driving in central Victoria when he noticed a strange light display
32:58in front of him.
33:01I got up towards it and, holy moly, the old thing lit up in the 10-foot area at the
33:08bottom, sort of come up and met the top,
33:10and the headlights of the car was the biggest awesome thing I've ever seen.
33:14They just pulled to the right of this old magnetised.
33:19I could see all the trees on the right-hand side of the road riding up, and I said,
33:24get out of this, Ron, and I pulled on the left.
33:26I could feel the back of this wheel spinning, and I got out of that.
33:35Ron only reported the incident after he heard that a young man died
33:39when his car collided with the same tree Ron had narrowly missed two days earlier.
33:47A couple of people from the government departments come and visited me.
33:50I know one was from the Air Force.
33:52They looked at the car, just walked around.
33:54I said, well, let's know what you'll find out.
33:56He said, yeah, we will.
33:57We will, Mr. Sullivan.
33:58Never heard any more about it.
34:03When I checked out the Royal Australian Air Force's list of UFO sightings for 1966,
34:09none of these cases were mentioned,
34:11though we know they investigated them.
34:15It took 16 years for records to be made available to UFO researchers.
34:20They knew what I wanted to look for,
34:22and when I arrived there was a body of files there
34:25that consisted of a couple of very large postal sacks.
34:29I kept requesting more and more files,
34:31and ultimately I got to a point where I examined a continuity of files
34:35that satisfied me that I was seeing a comprehensive picture of the RWF investigation at that time.
34:41I had a shopping list of things that I was focused on,
34:44and one of the key cases that I wanted to find out about was the West Hall case.
34:50It was surprising that the rest of the shopping list was fairly successful,
34:53but the West Hall case, given that there seemed to be literally at least hundreds of people involved with it,
35:00that had media attention at the time,
35:02there appeared to be evidence that there was a military investigation at the time,
35:07there was no West Hall file.
35:10The Disclosure Team was between about six and nine people over the years.
35:15As you can imagine, a four- or five-year project, as it turned out, needed quite a lot of
35:19effort.
35:20Literally, it was looking through hundreds and hundreds of file titles,
35:23maybe even thousands in the end.
35:25Along the way, we were always looking for files on the West Hall incident from 66.
35:29We started off with the Air Force, but within the Department of Defence,
35:33we also checked out files belonging to the Air Board,
35:37unit files from Air Force bases, former Department of Civil Aviation,
35:42Air Safety Bureau, CSIRO, intelligence files, ASIO.
35:45But the net result is we found nothing in this mammoth volume of government documentation,
35:52which would even begin to be a hint that there was something about West Hall in the government files.
35:59So, amazingly, we drew a blank.
36:03The West Hall sighting had clearly been erased from the record.
36:07But why?
36:08They hoped some publicity would draw former authorities out of the woodwork.
36:13I'm Shane.
36:14Nice to meet you, Shane.
36:16Joy, is it? Mark Howell from Channel 10. Nice to meet you.
36:19What we're really trying to get now is the people who are here, as police, as soldiers, as scientists perhaps,
36:28looking close up at what was on the ground.
36:30Some closure, Joy. How would you get some closure on this?
36:32One thing that we would really like would be that someone,
36:36either from the police or the military, would come forward and say,
36:39yes, they were there.
36:49Nobody from the authorities contacted me, but another witness did.
36:55Kevin Hurley saw the circles at the Grange on the day of the sighting
36:59and went back the next day for another look.
37:02Then when we came to the area where we'd gone through the paddock,
37:06there was the Air Force of the Army, a whole group of them there,
37:12stopping us from going through into the paddock.
37:14Don't come near in this area.
37:16And we just headed off back home.
37:20And did they give you any reason why you couldn't come through?
37:23No. There were vehicles on the paddock, and they had some sort of instrument,
37:32which at the time I thought looked like Geiger counters.
37:35The strong memory I've got is what happened after that.
37:38About a week later, I decided to go back again to have another look.
37:42As soon as we got down to where the paddock started,
37:46all the grass had been cut, which was quite disturbing.
37:52Wow.
37:53So then we walked through that area to where the circles were,
37:56and when we got into the area where the circles were previously,
38:00the whole area had been burnt, destroying all evidence.
38:05You asked me whether an R&D establishment would destroy evidence.
38:09Yes, of course they would.
38:13Bearing in mind that in the 1960s, Australia had great success financially
38:18with some of their pilotless target aircraft.
38:23Information related to some of these sorts of projects,
38:25if it was to be released to the wrong party,
38:28then it would have very adverse effects on Australia
38:31from a financial point of view.
38:33Any surviving documentation would be in Defence Central somewhere,
38:38but also probably overseas with the Allied.
38:43There may even not be anything left in Australia.
38:46Because bearing in mind it would have been very highly classified
38:49and could well have been destroyed as so much of that sort of record is
38:53after a period of time.
38:56So it's no wonder that I haven't unearthed any official records on Westall.
39:02But it's clear the authorities had something to hide.
39:06I just got called into the gymnasium and then these people spoke,
39:10and, you know, they just sort of said,
39:12oh, well, what you saw was sort of an experimental thing
39:15and, you know, we just don't want anyone talking about it
39:18or it going any further.
39:20How many people were there that came and do you remember?
39:24I think there was five, from memory.
39:27And they were, were they men and women or...?
39:32Yeah, I think there was three men and two women, from memory.
39:37So I'm not 100%.
39:38Sure.
39:39And you remember, do you remember if they were wearing uniforms?
39:44No, they were just in plain suits.
39:47In suits?
39:48Yeah.
39:49And did they explain where they were from, who they were?
39:52No, not really.
39:53Just a couple of the teachers said afterwards there,
39:56from some, one of these experimental mobs
39:59to do with the armed forces and stuff like that.
40:03And that was sort of the end of it.
40:06It had to have been something that we were working on
40:10and we knew all about it.
40:13We were in on it, even though we might not have known the detail.
40:19To have responded, that's one of the...
40:21That really, to my way of thinking, that's the key.
40:24It's the fact that we responded, whoever it was,
40:27the authorities responded so rapidly
40:29that they must have just about been sitting on the trucks
40:32with the engine going.
40:33And perhaps they were.
40:35Perhaps they'd received, technically, intelligence
40:38that there was something going wrong with this experimental craft
40:41and they weren't sure where it was going to land,
40:43but they were ready to go get it as soon as it did land.
40:47It sounds like a rational, logical explanation,
40:50but it needs then to be supported with evidence.
40:56If you think about how the people described the shape of it,
41:00the speed, the manoeuvres that it made,
41:02there is nothing around today that comes close to that.
41:09The final proof might be, for example,
41:11getting a piece of the flying saucer
41:13and examining it, subjecting to scientific examination
41:18and finding that it's of an element
41:22that is not manufactured on Earth.
41:23Now, that would maybe be the final proof.
41:26We haven't got that.
41:28So, we're still at the circumstantial evidence stage
41:32and whether that leads you to say,
41:34well, these are from outer space,
41:36they're interplanetary spaceships or not,
41:39is a philosophical question.
41:41It's a question of what you yourself feel is proof.
41:45I crave the proof that can be held in my hands
41:48and touched and smelled and measured.
41:52But I think we need to make room for a little mystery
41:54in our lives as well.
41:57I reckon...
41:59Yep.
42:00..somewhere in this area.
42:05I believe truth can exist without proof of it.
42:08And I see a real truth in the stories
42:10and memories of the witnesses.
42:12Which will probably...
42:13Even if it doesn't answer the question,
42:15what was it that flew over Westall?
42:19What I saw, I believe,
42:23is what a flying saucer has left behind.
42:27Professor James MacDonald looked for proof in statistical data.
42:32His research brought him to Australia
42:35a year after the Westall sighting.
42:40I'd ordered some of his papers from Arizona University,
42:44hoping to find something about Westall.
42:48Wow.
42:49What is all this?
42:49There's a lot of stuff here.
42:53James MacDonald's journal.
42:56His trip to Melbourne.
42:59There'll be stuff in here about Westall.
43:01Nice to meet you.
43:16And, uh, recording next,
43:18a, uh, discussion with, uh, Mr. Andrew Greenwood...
43:23Oh, wow.
43:24...in connection with the Westall sighting.
43:26Uh, this book is about the head, headmaster.
43:29He's the one who, uh, seemed to be, uh,
43:31quite influenced by some pressures
43:32to keep things quiet.
43:34He just told me that an Air Force officer
43:36had been out to the school
43:38and I was teaching at the time
43:40and he told him the thing.
43:41He wasn't going to interrupt my class
43:42so that I could speak to them.
43:43He promptly told them to get lost, I gather.
43:46They can't have had much time with him
43:48because I know I was very friendly
43:49with the senior master at the school.
43:50He said they were only in his office
43:52for very few minutes
43:53and, uh, Sampleby had sort of come out fuming
43:56and, uh, muttering, you know,
43:57what rock, what rock and all the rest of it.
43:59It's nice to have somebody telling the RAAF
44:02that it's a lot of nonsense
44:03and sending them packing.
44:06Victims of their own propaganda here.
44:09Yes.
44:12Now I had further corroborating evidence
44:14that the Air Force was involved at Westall.
44:17But students said other senior authorities
44:20also came to the high school.
44:23I was called down to the headmaster's office
44:26and there were two men
44:29in the headmaster's office,
44:31very well-dressed gentlemen,
44:33um, in suits.
44:35They weren't introduced to me in person
44:37and I don't know where they came from.
44:39From my references now as an adult,
44:41I would say they were Asia.
44:46So this is the actual office?
44:47Oh, this feels quite weird, yes.
44:51Yes.
44:54There was a desk down this side here
44:56and the headmaster was over here on that side
45:00and the two men were standing over there
45:02and I stood with my back to the window.
45:06Only one man spoke and he started off by,
45:10we'd like you to go through what you said happened yesterday.
45:16He was firing questions at me fairly rapidly.
45:21Then we went into,
45:24oh, and we suppose you think you saw a flying saucer.
45:28And I'm like, well, I didn't say that.
45:30I said I saw an object.
45:32And we suppose you saw little green men.
45:35Can you remember how you felt once it was over?
45:39Um, when I was actually in the confrontation situation
45:43with the men,
45:45um, very, very, felt very, very angry.
45:48Um, when I came out I think I burst into tears.
45:52They were certainly Australian government
45:53and I think it was part of their job to keep everything quiet
45:56and to not let the facts come out.
46:00Um, they knew more than what they were saying.
46:06It was their job to squash what was being seen.
46:09It was a bunch of kids that saw this
46:11so we would be able to squash this down.
46:13The authorities had found a way to silence the children,
46:16but they still had unfinished business
46:19with the teacher, Andrew Greenwood.
46:23He told me that two officers came to his home
46:26and threatened him under the Official Secrets Act.
46:29They said that he couldn't have seen a flying saucer at Westall
46:32because there were no such things as flying saucers.
46:35They threatened to tell people he was alcoholic,
46:38even though he wasn't.
46:42As a first-year teacher with a career ahead of him,
46:45he couldn't take the risk of speaking out.
46:49The person who had taken all the risks was Professor James MacDonald.
46:55His criticism of the government had provoked powerful enemies,
46:59but it didn't stop him challenging the establishment
47:01with other unorthodox scientific theories.
47:05Years ahead of his colleagues,
47:07he predicted high-altitude aircraft would destroy the ozone layer
47:11and increase the risk of skin cancer.
47:15He was invited to address the US Congress,
47:18but during his testimony,
47:20a congressman made an opportunistic attack.
47:23He publicly ridiculed MacDonald
47:25by saying he believed in UFOs and little green men.
47:31MacDonald's professional reputation was ruined.
47:37James MacDonald tried to create a climate of openness
47:40where unorthodox thinking could flourish.
47:44That's not what happened at Westall.
47:46I remember the assembly that we're all called for.
47:49We weren't even allowed to talk about it in school.
47:51We weren't allowed to mention it at all.
47:53There's like 20 people plus in the room at the moment
47:56and there's a real buzz and everyone's talking about my story.
48:01They're talking about the story.
48:03And as they're talking it through,
48:04they're putting the pieces together.
48:07It's wonderful.
48:09What isn't wonderful in the telling of this story
48:12is that Professor James MacDonald
48:14finally gave up the fight for UFO science.
48:21Humiliated and broken, he took his own life.
48:30MacDonald's suicide played on my mind.
48:33I began to think about weapons of mass destruction
48:36and global warming,
48:38where other brave scientists spoke out
48:40and were quickly shut down.
48:44I want my son to grow up in a world
48:46where it's possible to discuss and investigate
48:49even the craziest ideas,
48:51without fear of ridicule or punishment.
48:54You go from side to side.
48:56It's raining.
48:59Looks fantastic.
49:00Was it something from another planet at Westall?
49:03It certainly flew, as if it was.
49:08I'm left with the feeling that what people saw
49:11was what they said they saw.
49:14Something out of this world.
49:16All I knew was what I saw
49:18and it definitely was not any aircraft of the day
49:22by only to stretch the imagination
49:23and it certainly was not a weather balloon.
49:26It still would take me to my grave.
49:29What the hell was that?
49:30It was amazing.
49:32It's something that, you know, I've never forgotten.
49:34But you just sort of had it stored in the back of your mind
49:36because a lot of people are sceptical.
49:38The fact that they can travel so fast
49:40and that they've been spotted all over the world,
49:44landings and very similar stories
49:47of these patches of flattened grass or burnt grass.
49:51I personally believe that there is something going on somewhere else.
50:03I believe there's life out there. There is.
50:08I don't know what they look like, but I'm not afraid of them.
50:12I look up at the sky and say,
50:14where are you, you people?
50:16Come and talk to me.
50:18I will.
50:21Then go.
50:43The sky.
50:43I just need my representative
50:43The sky.
50:43The sky...
50:45The sky.
51:06Transcription by CastingWords
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