Random crop circle (certainly not at the Grange), Lucy Pringle, creativecommons.org
Circles, circles, everywhere!
The circles are a problem.
Many, many circles have been reported at Westall High School, the Grange, and the surrounding paddocks in the wake of the "UFO" sighting.
Many, many circles have been reported at Westall High School, the Grange, and the surrounding paddocks in the wake of the "UFO" sighting.
- Shane Ryan in 2016 had spoken to 96 witnesses who saw a flying saucer, but a whopping 147 people who saw circles "left behind by the flying saucer". [Studio 10, 2016] It is merely assumption that a circle means a flying saucer - or something, anyway - landed on that spot. There is no evidence this correlation exists. There is evidence of no correlation.
- Although landing marks and circles were reported at the time, they were not back then described in terms of the perfectly formed circles with perfectly flattened and spiraled grass that witnesses today report.
A circle is not a landing site
Shane Ryan has collected reports of circle locations according to the witnesses' best memories. He acknowledges - in the case of circles, anyway - that memories are faulty: "In the course of my research I have narrowed the circle locations to between 3 and 5!" This is despite the fact that as early as 2007, UFO researcher George Simpson listed ten circle locations. [Westall Yahoo, 2007] Shane has to discard some testimonies to arrive at only 3 to 5.
Yet the only landing site most witnesses agree on is in the Grange - and nobody actually saw anything landed there. They only saw the UFO descend out of view behind the pines and apparently rise up again. (I am discounting the two witnesses who claim to have seen UFOs on the ground at the Grange and over the west fence of the school - these are later embellishments without corroboration, and the accounts do not tie in with the sequence of events.)
Circles were also found in the paddocks between the school's back fence and the border of the Grange (300m away). In some cases witnesses have very clear memories of how they found circles here: which gate they went through, which dirt track they rode down, which fence they climbed over... Yet despite 200 or more witnesses on the school oval, many of them hanging over the fence to watch the UFO(s) drift over those very paddocks, there are no reports of the UFO hopping all over the paddocks making these circles before going behind the pines.
The same goes for any circles on the school grounds (the oval). There were at least two classes outside playing sport, which would generate many reports of seeing a UFO land there. While I won't dispute marks of some kind were seen (or remembered to have been seen) in all these places, clearly they were not created by a flying saucer (or a balloon).
In the 1960s, there would be some children who knew that UFOs made "nests" in the grass. They knew what to look for. Any wild paddock is going to have natural variations in the vegetation (including color, height of grass, direction of stalks, and damage to stalks), and sometimes those irregularities will form in a circle. You'd probably never notice if you weren't looking for them - but in this case, dozens of eager children were looking for them.
And they found them - in all kinds of places where the UFO would have been seen making them, if they were made by the UFO. Therefore, they were not made by the UFO.
This puts into doubt the origins of all the circles, since those in the Grange could have been formed by the same non-UFO non-Hibal process that made the rest. But let's allow that circles found in the Grange itself could have been made by a descending object touching the ground.
Andrew Greenwood and English master Claude Miller (who came outside after the fun was over) walked to the Grange and found nothing: "There were [reports] of course from the several groups of the children later on, that they’d seen one of these typical nests, but I didn’t see one myself. It would be the perfect area to see one in - lots of long grass. But I didn’t see one myself, although I looked around for quite a while." [McDonald, 1967]
Greenwood was at the famed site, but no child pointed out any circles to him. He didn't even hear about them until later on, despite the children knowing he was the teacher who had witnessed the flying saucers alongside them.
The earliest reports of circles come from:
Yet the only landing site most witnesses agree on is in the Grange - and nobody actually saw anything landed there. They only saw the UFO descend out of view behind the pines and apparently rise up again. (I am discounting the two witnesses who claim to have seen UFOs on the ground at the Grange and over the west fence of the school - these are later embellishments without corroboration, and the accounts do not tie in with the sequence of events.)
Circles were also found in the paddocks between the school's back fence and the border of the Grange (300m away). In some cases witnesses have very clear memories of how they found circles here: which gate they went through, which dirt track they rode down, which fence they climbed over... Yet despite 200 or more witnesses on the school oval, many of them hanging over the fence to watch the UFO(s) drift over those very paddocks, there are no reports of the UFO hopping all over the paddocks making these circles before going behind the pines.
The same goes for any circles on the school grounds (the oval). There were at least two classes outside playing sport, which would generate many reports of seeing a UFO land there. While I won't dispute marks of some kind were seen (or remembered to have been seen) in all these places, clearly they were not created by a flying saucer (or a balloon).
In the 1960s, there would be some children who knew that UFOs made "nests" in the grass. They knew what to look for. Any wild paddock is going to have natural variations in the vegetation (including color, height of grass, direction of stalks, and damage to stalks), and sometimes those irregularities will form in a circle. You'd probably never notice if you weren't looking for them - but in this case, dozens of eager children were looking for them.
And they found them - in all kinds of places where the UFO would have been seen making them, if they were made by the UFO. Therefore, they were not made by the UFO.
This puts into doubt the origins of all the circles, since those in the Grange could have been formed by the same non-UFO non-Hibal process that made the rest. But let's allow that circles found in the Grange itself could have been made by a descending object touching the ground.
Andrew Greenwood and English master Claude Miller (who came outside after the fun was over) walked to the Grange and found nothing: "There were [reports] of course from the several groups of the children later on, that they’d seen one of these typical nests, but I didn’t see one myself. It would be the perfect area to see one in - lots of long grass. But I didn’t see one myself, although I looked around for quite a while." [McDonald, 1967]
Greenwood was at the famed site, but no child pointed out any circles to him. He didn't even hear about them until later on, despite the children knowing he was the teacher who had witnessed the flying saucers alongside them.
The earliest reports of circles come from:
- Joy T, who reported "flattened waist high grass for 10yds diameter 600yds from school" (presumably the Grange). [Joy T., 1966]
- Judith Magee of the Victorian Flying Saucer Research Society, who went to the location on Friday and with the children's help found “a couple of circular patches where the grass had been flattened”. These were not perfect circles with beautifully flattened grass. She was so unimpressed with them that she thought they may have been created by the wind. [DJ Apr 14, 1966] Her photos (below) also do not show anything remarkable. Writing about them four years later, she said: "Other 'nests', some of doubtful origin, made news headlines in 1966..." in reference to the Westall case. [Magee, 1970]
- Jeff H, who wrote an article for a school newsletter a few weeks after the event, in which he said he went to the Grange after school and found "a spot" where the waist-high grass was "utterly crushed against the earth. It was an area of about 25-30 feet [7.5-9m] in diameter." [Clayton Calendar, 1966]
Flattened grass that is not a circle, photographed by Judith Magee (VFSRS)
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Joy standing on flattened grass that is not a circle, photographed by VFSRS
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So what made the circles?
Calling them circles is obviously a stretch, as can be seen in the photos. So, what made the areas of flattened grass? Some ideas:
- Poor memory, or altered memories after exposure to images and descriptions of perfectly formed UFO nests. Conversely, witness Laurin ran to the Grange during the sighting: "I remember seeing circles or a circle which had flattened the grass in the area... I guess I was kinda disappointed with what I saw, I really don't know what I expected." [Westall Yahoo, Apr 23, 2007]
- Wind
- A twirling partially deflated Hibal balloon: may explain Jack T's observation at the Grange (as well as that of other witnesses) after he ran over at recess - "grass flattened in a clockwise direction".
- Misperception of natural variations in the vegetation
- Accidental damage by humans or animals
- On-site military personnel hoping to fuel UFO rumors: witness Les went to a nearby field (or "the Grange" according to Westall '66 [2010]) in the late afternoon on Wednesday and saw two military trucks and four men using "apparatus". Two of the men suddenly "just started kicking at the ground or grass". After the men left, he found a "pristine" 30ft circle. [Westall Yahoo, Aug 20, 2005] I would suggest those men had made the circle before he arrived and were adding the finishing touches.
- Pranksters: Rosario, who attended the Grange reunion in 2013, told me he was talking to witness Paul when Claude Miller joined them and told Paul: "I know you saw at the time some boots making circles [at the Grange], but you have never reported this." Shane Ryan talked to woodwork teacher Gerry Shepherd who found "pads" in the grass behind the pines in the Grange. "He didn't think they had been caused by flying saucers, but more likely by students or even pranksters." [Westall Yahoo, Apr 19, 2006]
The Stranger
How much did Aussie kids in the 1960s know about flying saucers?
Article about The Stranger (ABC TV) (Source:
Women's Weekly, Apr 29, 1964)
ABC TV aired Australia's first ever science fiction drama, The Stranger, in 1964-65.
Three high school students become suspicious of a new teacher "Adam", and eventually learn he's an alien on the search for a new home, as his world is dying.
The kids come upon his flying saucer in a forest setting, and one of them even takes a ride back to Adam's home planet.
"Did it shape the witnesses' response... to what was seen - how they interpreted what they saw, how they described it? Perhaps..." [Shane Ryan, Westall Facebook, Feb 16, 2018] While Shane Ryan then dismisses the similarities as irrelevant, David Halperin believes the TV show may have set the Westall students' expectations and affected their interpretations. [Halperin, 2018]
Episode 1 on YouTube.
Three high school students become suspicious of a new teacher "Adam", and eventually learn he's an alien on the search for a new home, as his world is dying.
The kids come upon his flying saucer in a forest setting, and one of them even takes a ride back to Adam's home planet.
"Did it shape the witnesses' response... to what was seen - how they interpreted what they saw, how they described it? Perhaps..." [Shane Ryan, Westall Facebook, Feb 16, 2018] While Shane Ryan then dismisses the similarities as irrelevant, David Halperin believes the TV show may have set the Westall students' expectations and affected their interpretations. [Halperin, 2018]
Episode 1 on YouTube.
Next up: If the UFO's incredible capabilities have been misremembered or embellished, the circles don't represent landing sites, and the cover-up was typical bureaucratic ass-covering, what's left of this story?
Sources
- ABC TV & iview (2020, Jan 29). The Stranger 1964 (ep1) [Video]. YouTube.
- Clayton Calendar (Term 1, 1966). Eyewitness account of a flying saucer [Newsletter of former Clayton Primary School]. Retrieved from Project1947, Source 10.
- Dandenong Journal (1966, Apr 14). Flying Saucer Mystery: School Silent What Was It? p.1.
- Halperin D. (2018, Mar 9, 22, Apr 19). “The Stranger” and the Westall UFO – Does Life Imitate TV? (Part 1, Part 2); “The Stranger” and the Westall UFO – Some Afterthoughts. [Blog]
- Joy T. (1966, Apr 7). Sighting report to Victorian Flying Saucer Research Society. (Courtesy VFSRS)
- Magee, J. (1970, Jul). ‘Nests’ and ‘landing pads’ in Australian Flying Saucer Review No. 2. VUFORS.
- McDonald, J.E. (1967, Jun 28). [Recorded interview with Andrew Greenwood]. Retrieved from YouTube.
- Musgrove, N. (1964, Apr 29). Kids - you can't fool them. Women's Weekly, p.15. Retrieved from NLA Trove.
- Studio 10 (2016, Jan 21). Melbourne UFO Mystery: 50 Years On [Video]. YouTube.
- Westall Flying Saucer Incident Facebook Group (created 2007, Dec 2). Shane Ryan (admin). [Cited as “Westall Facebook” throughout.]
- Westall High School 1966 UFO Incident Yahoo Group (created 2005, Feb 14). Shane Ryan (admin). (via Keith Basterfield and Internet Archive). [Cited as "Westall Yahoo" throughout.]
(c) Charlie Wiser 2022
