Cessna tracking aircraft (chase plane from Project HIBAL) on a remote sheep station in NSW (photo from Thorn, 2021). Later, a twin-engine Piper aircraft was flown.
A game of cat-and-mouse
It's important to carefully go through what science teacher Andrew Greenwood testified to seeing, since his is the fullest contemporaneous account by far. As an adult he was likely less influenced by the young witnesses, and indeed he does not believe some of the taller tales. Nevertheless, as we'll see, his account is not particularly clear because at times he speaks for other witnesses rather than sticking to exactly what he saw.
His testimony comes from a Dandenong Journal article ["DJ", 1966], a paraphrased interview with UFO enthusiast James Kibel ["K", 1966], and an interview with James MacDonald one year later ["McD", 1967]. (See sources at bottom of page.)
Greenwood observed only the second half of the Westall event after a girl rushed into his classroom yelling: "Mr Greenwood, quick, quick, flying saucer outside." [McD] Although most modern accounts have him and his students rushing outside immediately, he told Dr James E McDonald (physicist and UFO researcher) something different in 1967:
"And I got rid of her because I wasn’t going to leave my class... it was about recess, I suppose 5, 10 minutes later... I thought I’ll wander out and have a look." By the time he went outside, "there must’ve been more than half the school, about 300 approximately of the boys and girls of the school on the oval". [McD]
Marilyn, a student in his class, agrees they didn't leave until after the bell went for recess: "...everybody started to head towards the door and the teacher said, 'Sit down, it’s not recess yet.' And a few minutes later the bell went off. Everyone just took off out into the oval..." [Westall '66, 2010] However, Joy remembers exactly the opposite, with Greenwood saying: "Okay, well come on, we'll pack up and we'll all go down and have a look." [McMahon, 2019] Lance B, another student who says he was in Greenwood's class (although Joy T says it was an all-girl class [Westall Yahoo, Aug 6, 2006]), remembers seeing the UFOs out the window (the other witnesses in the class don't remember this, although an older student in a different science class does) and recalls Greenwood saying: "We’re doing science, we should go out and investigate it." [Gardam, 2017, recorded ~2010]
When he spoke with Kibel in 1966, Greenwood does suggest he went outside almost immediately: "he didn’t take immediate notice. But when the child insisted that this object was in the sky, he decided to go out and have a look for himself." [K] Perhaps Greenwood wanted to exaggerate his enthusiasm for Kibel, or emphasize his work ethic for McDonald. Either way, the Dandenong Journal article confirms he missed the first half of the event: "Mr Greenwood first saw the object when it rose into the air from behind pine trees near the school." [DJ] More on that later.
I hypothesize that the UFO Greenwood saw was a completely different object than what was seen in the first half of the event floating across the school. Evidence he never saw the first UFO, and only saw the second:
So, here we are looking at the second half of the sighting: a UFO playing cat-and-mouse with five light aircraft, which the witnesses wrongly assumed was the same UFO that went behind the pines.
His testimony comes from a Dandenong Journal article ["DJ", 1966], a paraphrased interview with UFO enthusiast James Kibel ["K", 1966], and an interview with James MacDonald one year later ["McD", 1967]. (See sources at bottom of page.)
Greenwood observed only the second half of the Westall event after a girl rushed into his classroom yelling: "Mr Greenwood, quick, quick, flying saucer outside." [McD] Although most modern accounts have him and his students rushing outside immediately, he told Dr James E McDonald (physicist and UFO researcher) something different in 1967:
"And I got rid of her because I wasn’t going to leave my class... it was about recess, I suppose 5, 10 minutes later... I thought I’ll wander out and have a look." By the time he went outside, "there must’ve been more than half the school, about 300 approximately of the boys and girls of the school on the oval". [McD]
Marilyn, a student in his class, agrees they didn't leave until after the bell went for recess: "...everybody started to head towards the door and the teacher said, 'Sit down, it’s not recess yet.' And a few minutes later the bell went off. Everyone just took off out into the oval..." [Westall '66, 2010] However, Joy remembers exactly the opposite, with Greenwood saying: "Okay, well come on, we'll pack up and we'll all go down and have a look." [McMahon, 2019] Lance B, another student who says he was in Greenwood's class (although Joy T says it was an all-girl class [Westall Yahoo, Aug 6, 2006]), remembers seeing the UFOs out the window (the other witnesses in the class don't remember this, although an older student in a different science class does) and recalls Greenwood saying: "We’re doing science, we should go out and investigate it." [Gardam, 2017, recorded ~2010]
When he spoke with Kibel in 1966, Greenwood does suggest he went outside almost immediately: "he didn’t take immediate notice. But when the child insisted that this object was in the sky, he decided to go out and have a look for himself." [K] Perhaps Greenwood wanted to exaggerate his enthusiasm for Kibel, or emphasize his work ethic for McDonald. Either way, the Dandenong Journal article confirms he missed the first half of the event: "Mr Greenwood first saw the object when it rose into the air from behind pine trees near the school." [DJ] More on that later.
I hypothesize that the UFO Greenwood saw was a completely different object than what was seen in the first half of the event floating across the school. Evidence he never saw the first UFO, and only saw the second:
- Greenwood went outside 5-10 minutes after a "flying saucer" was first seen by the PE class drifting over the school [McD]. As reported, he missed the part where the UFO was floating over paddocks and went behind the pines. [DJ]
- The first thing he saw was something indistinct and distant: "It took me a while to see it - grey against the... blue-grey sky. I couldn’t see it immediately. Everyone's saying, 'It’s there! Are you blind?' I finally picked up what they were looking at." [McD] Nobody has testified that the UFO(s) from the first half of the event were anything but easy to see. He is describing something different here.
- He describes a "cylindrical cigar-shaped" object two-thirds the length of a light plane zipping around the sky, popping in and out of view. [McD] His UFO looks and acts unlike the one(s) described by those witnesses who were outside from the start.
- His UFO was "on its own when we first saw it, and the next thing we noticed was the presence of one of these light planes." [McD] So he saw a cigar-shaped UFO "like a thin beam of light" [DJ] along with one plane (then more planes). This description is not from the first half of the event where the UFO was floating over paddocks and was flying-saucer-shaped.
- If his UFO was saucer-shaped, he would have sometimes seen it as a disc - an oval or circle - as it banked and turned performing its amazing maneuvers in three-dimensional space. But he never describes it as anything other than a long thin shape that sometimes "appeared to bulge in the middle". [McD]
- "Oh, one thing I forgot to mention - at one stage it disappeared behind a tall row of pine trees and it would appear that it went behind them..." Unlike much of the interview where he uses "I", this uncertain phrasing suggests he did not witness it for himself.
- "We were never sure at any stage that it was anything else but airborne, although some of the children say that they saw it later... [inaudible]" which indicates he did not himself see it going behind the pines, and from his tone does not really believe that anyone saw the object on the ground. This and other parts of the interview suggest, as David Halperin explains, "an 'underground version' of the incident that must have circulated among the Westall students soon after it happened, side by side with the far tamer 'official version' that Greenwood knew first-hand." [Halperin, 2016]
- "One of the big points that I got out of this was the fact that it was on its own when we first saw it." But Greenwood did not "first" see it - the girls on the oval first saw it. He is again combining his later sighting with the children's earlier sighting, because he assumes it was all the same UFO. He did not see the UFO on its own - he saw it with a plane (and later, several planes). Otherwise he would not have relegated the sight of the UFO on its own to merely a "point" he "got out of this".
So, here we are looking at the second half of the sighting: a UFO playing cat-and-mouse with five light aircraft, which the witnesses wrongly assumed was the same UFO that went behind the pines.
Scrambling for cover
Project HIBAL required a chase plane to locate the descending payload and relay directions to the ground crew. The plane was a Cessna [Thorn, 2021, p.58; see image at top of page]. This explains the first aircraft the witnesses saw, and it probably left the scene when the job was done.
What about the other planes that arrived shortly after?
Witnesses at Westall, who were used to seeing light aircraft overhead as they were only 5km (3mi) from busy Moorabbin Airport, don't always sound certain in their identification of these craft:
The following evidence supports the theory that while the initial plane was a Cessna (the HIBAL chase plane), the others were not, and that what the witnesses saw in Part 2 of the event was an RAAF training exercise as described in this letter, published in the Dandenong Journal three weeks after the incident. The description matches Greenwood's account well:
What about the other planes that arrived shortly after?
Witnesses at Westall, who were used to seeing light aircraft overhead as they were only 5km (3mi) from busy Moorabbin Airport, don't always sound certain in their identification of these craft:
- "[Greenwood] noticed a light plane, probably a Cessna or a Piper Cub" [Kibel, 1966]
- "many private aircraft, mainly Cessnas" [Jeff H, Clayton Calendar, 1966]
- "[Greenwood] thought Cessnas" [Claude Miller, Westall '66, 2010]
- "small planes like Cessnas" [Joy T, McMahon, 2019]
- "the little Cessnas, I think they were, came and sort of buzzed around them" [Joy T, Mitchell, 2022]
The following evidence supports the theory that while the initial plane was a Cessna (the HIBAL chase plane), the others were not, and that what the witnesses saw in Part 2 of the event was an RAAF training exercise as described in this letter, published in the Dandenong Journal three weeks after the incident. The description matches Greenwood's account well:
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Your flying saucer story is very interesting, if only for the quite accurate description of a normal air-to-air firing practice exercise which has been carried out by aircraft practically as long as there have been fighting aircraft...
[It] is a reasonably accurate description of a target drogue towed by one aircraft on a few hundred yards of tow line so that other aircraft can practice what is termed air-to-air firing.
That is the rather complicated maneuvers required to shoot down a moving aircraft from another moving aircraft in the air.
The aircraft “apparently observing the object” was obviously the towing aircraft and the four other aircraft “playing a cat and mouse kind of game” with the “object” the aircraft practicing firing - probably with camera guns - at the drogue...
[A] drogue is a long cylinder of fabric – silk or nylon – something like a wind sock seen on airfields, about half the length of a light aircraft, silver-grey in color, which moves up and down and side to side on the currents of air from the towing aircraft and is never stationary...
Ex RAAF navigator 436150, Dandenong
[Dandenong Journal, Apr 28, 1966, p. 21]
Your flying saucer story is very interesting, if only for the quite accurate description of a normal air-to-air firing practice exercise which has been carried out by aircraft practically as long as there have been fighting aircraft...
[It] is a reasonably accurate description of a target drogue towed by one aircraft on a few hundred yards of tow line so that other aircraft can practice what is termed air-to-air firing.
That is the rather complicated maneuvers required to shoot down a moving aircraft from another moving aircraft in the air.
The aircraft “apparently observing the object” was obviously the towing aircraft and the four other aircraft “playing a cat and mouse kind of game” with the “object” the aircraft practicing firing - probably with camera guns - at the drogue...
[A] drogue is a long cylinder of fabric – silk or nylon – something like a wind sock seen on airfields, about half the length of a light aircraft, silver-grey in color, which moves up and down and side to side on the currents of air from the towing aircraft and is never stationary...
Ex RAAF navigator 436150, Dandenong
[Dandenong Journal, Apr 28, 1966, p. 21]
CA25-39 Winjeel A85-439 (at the RAAF Museum)
Since 1958, the RAAF's Basic Flying Training School (#1 BFTS) was at Point Cook, 33km (20m) west of Westall across Port Phillip Bay. The RAAF was flying Avon Sabre jets in 1966, but until 1975 pilots were still being trained on the Winjeel, a light aircraft slightly larger than a 1960s Cessna but with an identical wingspan:length ratio. By 1964 the school had 30 Winjeels, with as many as 13 planes airborne at once. [Stephens, 1997]
Although Shane Ryan quotes unknown witnesses saying the planes "didn't look like military aircraft - they weren't grey or silver, they didn't have any military markings," [VUFOA-TV Victorian UFO Action, 2017] a witness 20 years earlier reported they were "aluminium colored". [Chalker, 1996]
But why was the RAAF doing a training exercise so far from their base? We'll get to that later.
Greenwood's description of his UFO (a cylindrical, cigar-shaped object two-thirds the length of a light plane, zipping around the sky) matches the size and movements of a target drogue. Because the drogue was several hundred yards behind the towing plane, it would not be apparent to an observer that it was actually attached to that plane. The drogue would also present to the observer as different shapes depending on the direction it was moving from one moment to the next.
What about the rapid acceleration that Greenwood describes? His initial testimony does not describe anything unusual in this respect: "five aircraft which attempted to follow the object as it occasionally accelerated back and forth from east to west" [DJ reportage]. Kibel a few weeks later paraphrases Greenwood saying something similar: "it would slowly accelerate and then rapidly accelerate and move away from them and then stop" [K] (this is a misrepresentation, as Greenwood said it was always in motion).
By the time Greenwood talks to McDonald a year later, when it's firmly established in his mind that there's been a cover-up because what he saw was unusual, his description changes:
"It seemed to be able to accelerate and disappear out of sight and then someone would see it over in another part of the sky through an arc of, I suppose, 30 degrees away from us. In other words, it moved a considerable distance very rapidly. And then it would move back again." [McD]
Greenwood describes losing sight of the object, then seeing it again elsewhere in the sky, and he assumes it required huge acceleration to get there. He goes on:
"As I’ve mentioned, it came towards us, not that we could see it actually coming towards us, but we could see it was closer now than it was before." [McD]
So he doesn't see the object in the act of moving at unbelievable speed, he only sees it in one position, and then some time later in another position. His brain fills in the gaps. Given he said it was hard to see in the first place, it's not surprising that he kept losing sight of it.
Even McDonald seems a little dubious that rapid acceleration was what Greenwood was really seeing. Regarding the final acceleration when the object disappeared, McDonald asks:
McD: You did see it accelerate, didn’t you?
G: Oh yes, yes.
McD: It didn’t disappear in mid-air?
G: Oh no, [inaudible] you could see it accelerate.
Greenwood has surely considered that no rapid acceleration was involved - he never reported it in 1966, after all - and he sounds a little defensive in his responses.
What happened to the UFO? Greenwood says it "did one of these sudden accelerations and then nobody could pick it up again" [McD]. But in the newspaper article the year before: "After about 20 minutes (at about the end of morning recess) Mr Greenwood looked away and when he looked back it had disappeared." [DJ]
It would seem the towing aircraft simply flew away, and the drogue was lost to sight. Greenwood has no memory of where or when the planes left: "I just can’t remember what happened to the aircraft." [McD]
Witness Kelli R (from Greenwood's class) describes the UFO as "a silver disc up in the sky with 2-3 planes trailing it" and that it "seemed to be changing colour from silver to grey-white and then back to silver again." [Westall Yahoo, Aug 20, 2006] This sounds like the target drogue catching the light. Kelli later mentions that it "kept dropping behind the trees near the Grange. I just thought it was trying to hide from the planes that were flying around." This could simply be the drogue going over the horizon and returning, or it could be that she caught the tail-end of Part 1 of the event - the balloon bobbing up and down in the Grange as it blew around.
There could be other reasons that so many planes were in the air:
While these explanations are possible, I find them unsatisfactory because in neither case would the pilots be flying in an apparently reckless manner. Nor do they explain the what the UFO alongside them was.
Greenwood is baffled that Moorabbin Airport "denies the presence of any planes, they actually denied there were any planes in the air", since it's a busy airport. But he didn't talk to the airport himself - he's not sure who called them, and nor does he say what questions were asked [McD]. He may be misinterpreting the airport's response - perhaps what they said were no UFOs in the area, or no planes from their runways in that specific area at the time. If the planes were RAAF, maybe they were not required to report them or were ordered not to.
The Dandenong Journal reporter wrote: "The RAAF had no aircraft operating in the area at the time" [DJ, Apr 21, 1966] but doesn't give a source for the information.
Although Shane Ryan quotes unknown witnesses saying the planes "didn't look like military aircraft - they weren't grey or silver, they didn't have any military markings," [VUFOA-TV Victorian UFO Action, 2017] a witness 20 years earlier reported they were "aluminium colored". [Chalker, 1996]
But why was the RAAF doing a training exercise so far from their base? We'll get to that later.
Greenwood's description of his UFO (a cylindrical, cigar-shaped object two-thirds the length of a light plane, zipping around the sky) matches the size and movements of a target drogue. Because the drogue was several hundred yards behind the towing plane, it would not be apparent to an observer that it was actually attached to that plane. The drogue would also present to the observer as different shapes depending on the direction it was moving from one moment to the next.
What about the rapid acceleration that Greenwood describes? His initial testimony does not describe anything unusual in this respect: "five aircraft which attempted to follow the object as it occasionally accelerated back and forth from east to west" [DJ reportage]. Kibel a few weeks later paraphrases Greenwood saying something similar: "it would slowly accelerate and then rapidly accelerate and move away from them and then stop" [K] (this is a misrepresentation, as Greenwood said it was always in motion).
By the time Greenwood talks to McDonald a year later, when it's firmly established in his mind that there's been a cover-up because what he saw was unusual, his description changes:
"It seemed to be able to accelerate and disappear out of sight and then someone would see it over in another part of the sky through an arc of, I suppose, 30 degrees away from us. In other words, it moved a considerable distance very rapidly. And then it would move back again." [McD]
Greenwood describes losing sight of the object, then seeing it again elsewhere in the sky, and he assumes it required huge acceleration to get there. He goes on:
"As I’ve mentioned, it came towards us, not that we could see it actually coming towards us, but we could see it was closer now than it was before." [McD]
So he doesn't see the object in the act of moving at unbelievable speed, he only sees it in one position, and then some time later in another position. His brain fills in the gaps. Given he said it was hard to see in the first place, it's not surprising that he kept losing sight of it.
Even McDonald seems a little dubious that rapid acceleration was what Greenwood was really seeing. Regarding the final acceleration when the object disappeared, McDonald asks:
McD: You did see it accelerate, didn’t you?
G: Oh yes, yes.
McD: It didn’t disappear in mid-air?
G: Oh no, [inaudible] you could see it accelerate.
Greenwood has surely considered that no rapid acceleration was involved - he never reported it in 1966, after all - and he sounds a little defensive in his responses.
What happened to the UFO? Greenwood says it "did one of these sudden accelerations and then nobody could pick it up again" [McD]. But in the newspaper article the year before: "After about 20 minutes (at about the end of morning recess) Mr Greenwood looked away and when he looked back it had disappeared." [DJ]
It would seem the towing aircraft simply flew away, and the drogue was lost to sight. Greenwood has no memory of where or when the planes left: "I just can’t remember what happened to the aircraft." [McD]
Witness Kelli R (from Greenwood's class) describes the UFO as "a silver disc up in the sky with 2-3 planes trailing it" and that it "seemed to be changing colour from silver to grey-white and then back to silver again." [Westall Yahoo, Aug 20, 2006] This sounds like the target drogue catching the light. Kelli later mentions that it "kept dropping behind the trees near the Grange. I just thought it was trying to hide from the planes that were flying around." This could simply be the drogue going over the horizon and returning, or it could be that she caught the tail-end of Part 1 of the event - the balloon bobbing up and down in the Grange as it blew around.
There could be other reasons that so many planes were in the air:
- one pilot called in the UFO, and other light aircraft in the vicinity showed up to see
- trainee civilian pilots were doing regular circuits out of Moorabbin Airport
While these explanations are possible, I find them unsatisfactory because in neither case would the pilots be flying in an apparently reckless manner. Nor do they explain the what the UFO alongside them was.
Greenwood is baffled that Moorabbin Airport "denies the presence of any planes, they actually denied there were any planes in the air", since it's a busy airport. But he didn't talk to the airport himself - he's not sure who called them, and nor does he say what questions were asked [McD]. He may be misinterpreting the airport's response - perhaps what they said were no UFOs in the area, or no planes from their runways in that specific area at the time. If the planes were RAAF, maybe they were not required to report them or were ordered not to.
The Dandenong Journal reporter wrote: "The RAAF had no aircraft operating in the area at the time" [DJ, Apr 21, 1966] but doesn't give a source for the information.
Dr James E McDonald was unimpressed
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After interviewing Andrew Greenwood alongside various other UFO witnesses on his visit to Australia, the following July Dr James E McDonald spoke at length at the panel on UFOs for the House Committee on Science and Astronautics (1968).
His investigation of this particular case must have failed to impress him, because when he reached the part of his talk about multi-witness sightings, he didn't mention Westall. [Sources: McDonald, 1968; Willis, 2020] |
James E McDonald, PhD
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Not a coincidence?
What are the odds that two unrelated UFO sightings - an RAAF training exercise and a crashing Hibal - were occurring at the same time in the same place? Seems unlikely.
The PR Disaster hypothesis explains the coincidence.
Once the chase plane located the Hibal balloon that morning, floating towards Melbourne's suburbs, there would've been panic in the ranks - not only because of the secret payload but because of the damage or death it might cause when it landed. Even if it ended up not causing damage, there would be a PR nightmare surrounding the near-miss.
The RAAF's involvement in this incident is explored on the next page. They were the authority tasked with investigating UFO sightings (calling it a "burden"), but why such a speedy response to a reported UFO - within minutes? And if anyone really thought this was an extra-terrestrial visitor, a few light aircraft was hardly an appropriate response.
If this was actually a training exercise, I propose it was a fake one, scrambled to distract from the crashing Hibal and to provide plausible deniability (which "Ex RAAF navigator 436150" conveniently did in his letter, above). The RAAF had an unknown amount of time to organize this mission, but longer than might be apparent to onlookers: well before the UFO appeared over Westall High School, the chase plane knew where it was heading. And if four or five RAAF flight school instructors are ordered to fly across the bay one sunny morning for a spontaneous training exercise, they do it. They don't ask why.
The PR Disaster hypothesis explains the coincidence.
Once the chase plane located the Hibal balloon that morning, floating towards Melbourne's suburbs, there would've been panic in the ranks - not only because of the secret payload but because of the damage or death it might cause when it landed. Even if it ended up not causing damage, there would be a PR nightmare surrounding the near-miss.
The RAAF's involvement in this incident is explored on the next page. They were the authority tasked with investigating UFO sightings (calling it a "burden"), but why such a speedy response to a reported UFO - within minutes? And if anyone really thought this was an extra-terrestrial visitor, a few light aircraft was hardly an appropriate response.
If this was actually a training exercise, I propose it was a fake one, scrambled to distract from the crashing Hibal and to provide plausible deniability (which "Ex RAAF navigator 436150" conveniently did in his letter, above). The RAAF had an unknown amount of time to organize this mission, but longer than might be apparent to onlookers: well before the UFO appeared over Westall High School, the chase plane knew where it was heading. And if four or five RAAF flight school instructors are ordered to fly across the bay one sunny morning for a spontaneous training exercise, they do it. They don't ask why.
What happened at the Grange?
At some point just before or during Part 2 of the sighting, some students jumped the fence to investigate the UFO (which I propose was a Hibal balloon and parachute) that they'd watched go down "behind the Pines" to land in the Grange.
Tanya and Jacquie say they were the first two students who went over the fence. Tanya ran on ahead and Jacquie recalls: "Before I got there, the disc came back up again. So I stopped chasing it." She does not explain how the disc "came back again" - she was closer than almost anyone but did not see it rise up. She presumably caught sight of the new "UFO" in the sky and assumed it was the same one.
A third girl Terry says she arrived at the Grange to find Tanya and another (unnamed) girl there, contradicting Tanya's testimony. The following is Terry's, which changes so dramatically regarding her encounter with the flying saucer that I doubt much of it represents reality - especially as Tanya came forward in 2021 to say "by the time I arrived it had gone." [Westall Facebook, Nov 23, 2021]
Tanya and Jacquie say they were the first two students who went over the fence. Tanya ran on ahead and Jacquie recalls: "Before I got there, the disc came back up again. So I stopped chasing it." She does not explain how the disc "came back again" - she was closer than almost anyone but did not see it rise up. She presumably caught sight of the new "UFO" in the sky and assumed it was the same one.
A third girl Terry says she arrived at the Grange to find Tanya and another (unnamed) girl there, contradicting Tanya's testimony. The following is Terry's, which changes so dramatically regarding her encounter with the flying saucer that I doubt much of it represents reality - especially as Tanya came forward in 2021 to say "by the time I arrived it had gone." [Westall Facebook, Nov 23, 2021]
Case study: Feeling the heat
The testimony of this Westall witness Terry exemplifies two significant trends when it comes to the reliability of eyewitness memory:
This analysis follows her changing story over the years. The most significant embellishment is that she initially reported the flying saucer was already overhead taking off when she arrived, but this changed to being on the ground for several minutes and that she got close to it.
ON ARRIVAL IN THE GRANGE
Terry found two girls:
HAD THE FLYING SAUCER LANDED?
- her story changed (became more amazing) over time, and
- she absorbed others’ stories and now tells them as her own.
This analysis follows her changing story over the years. The most significant embellishment is that she initially reported the flying saucer was already overhead taking off when she arrived, but this changed to being on the ground for several minutes and that she got close to it.
ON ARRIVAL IN THE GRANGE
Terry found two girls:
- in a dazed state (2007)
- passed out (2010)
- white-faced, having fainted, but now awake (2016-1)
- one hysterical and one fainted (2016-2)
- both on the ground, one screaming and one fainted (2017-1)
- Tanya was fainted but also “looked like someone that had just passed out” and “she was already hysterical” and screaming, and the other girl helped her back to school (2017-2)
HAD THE FLYING SAUCER LANDED?
- it was rising up into the air above the girls (2007)
- it “apparently” had landed because there was a flattened yellow circle, and the girls looked up (i.e. it was overhead) to see it turn on its side and disappear into thin air (2010)
- Westall '66 comes out (2010), in which Victor Z says he went over the west fence to a landed flying saucer (one of two) and felt its heat from a meter away. He had told Shane Ryan and Bill Chalker this story in 2007 & 2008. Shane Ryan has not found any of the kids who were with Victor or saw this incident over the west fence. In this interview [18:40] we hear about two direct witnesses and one indirect witness who came forward decades later to tell Shane they'd seen these flying saucers. Victor claimed the objects sat there for 2 hours yet none of these witnesses took a photo, went to investigate, called the police, told the newspaper reporter who was searching for witnesses, or showed any concern whatsoever for these children. Note also: these witnesses have not given public testimony, and Shane has misrepresented witness testimony before.
- Terry was “about six meters away from it” (2016-1) and it's now “on the ground in front of me” (2016-2) - she has appropriated Victor's story
- it was “probably 3 or 4 meters” away (2017-1)
- she “felt a bit of a heat coming off it” (2017-2) - she has added the "heat" from Victor's story
- “as you would’ve seen in the documentary,” she says, and proceeds to say something different from what she said in the [2010] documentary (this is called gaslighting): now she was 3-4 meters away and it was raised off the ground “a couple of meters, at the most” and just starting to take off (2017-2)
- "I didn’t see it land but I did see it on the ground in front of me." (2021, also 2020)
- It's 3 meters off the ground when she arrives. (2023)
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DESCRIPTION OF SAUCER
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Comparison of Victor's drawing (top) with T's changing renditions in the years afterwards.
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HOW LONG BEFORE IT TOOK OFF?
DESCRIPTION OF THE SAUCER TAKING OFF
HOW MANY SAUCERS?
WAS TANYA A FRIEND?
- it was already overhead taking off when she came upon it (2007, 2010)
- it took off from the ground after “a few minutes” (2016)
- it “started to take off pretty well straight away” (2020)
- it rose up “within I'd say a minute” (2021)
DESCRIPTION OF THE SAUCER TAKING OFF
- it was already rising up above her (2007)
- it was overhead, it turned side-on and disappeared into thin air (2010)
- it started on the ground, rose to 12 feet (3.7m), turned on its side, zoomed up and disappeared (2016-2)
- it rose “very slowly off the ground”, “gained a bit of height”, then turned on its side and whizzed up to join “the other two” before disappearing (2017-1)
- it rose 4-5 meters (2020) or 3-4 meters (2021) before turning on its side and zooming away to join the other two, and disappeared
- it rose to a height of 15 meters before turning and zooming away (2023)
HOW MANY SAUCERS?
- one flying saucer (2010)
- three flying saucers (2016-2, 2017-1), one of which landed in the Grange
WAS TANYA A FRIEND?
- “a fairly close friend” (2017-1)
- “quite good friends" (2017-2) and they sometimes walked to school together. She appropriates Jacquie's story about going to Tanya's house, finding it locked up (Jacquie found a woman living there), and being told "she’d gone, she’d moved, and they knew nothing about it.”
SOURCES (full sources at bottom of page):
- Westall Yahoo [2007]
- Westall '66 [2010]
- Matthew Dunn (Jan 6, 2016) The Westall ‘UFO’ incident still remains a mystery 50 years after it occurred. news.com.au [2016-1]
- Studio 10 [2016-2]
- Gardam, S. (director). Westall [short film] [2017-1]
- VUFOA-TV Victorian UFO Action [2017-2]
- Fox, J. (director). The Phenomenon [2020]
- 7NEWS Spotlight feat. Ross Coulthart [2021]
The authorities arrive
HIBAL launch vehicle convoy: the Land Rover is used by the ground crew during recovery. Photo from Thorn (2021).
The Department of Supply retrieval crew would have been on their way to the approximate predicted landing site long before the UFO was spotted at Westall. After "cut down" this crew would have been given a more accurate landing site from the chase plane, and they'd have arrived in Land Rovers (one yellow utility type, one station wagon [Thorn, 2021, p.39]) to remove the balloon, parachute, and payload.
Witnesses report (with varying degrees of uncertainty) Army, Air Force, men in suits, and other authorities arriving at the school from within 20 minutes to 2 hours. Again, their speedy arrival would be expected because they'd already be on alert with the intention of covering up this near-disaster. Shane Ryan learned that fire trucks from Oakleigh Fire Station attended at the Grange (recall that battery fires can set fire to the ground on landing - perhaps there was a grass fire) [Westall Facebook, Aug 17, 2020], and a freelance reporter said he failed to reach the school because the roads were sealed off by men he believes were officers from the Commonwealth Police. [Westall Facebook, Nov 25, 2011]
Witness Rob N (who believes he saw a balloon that day) has another explanation for why an Army presence was reported. He had a very sick brother, and his father would pick him up from school to visit the hospital every day. "On UFO day he picked me up as usual wearing his uniform and driving an Army vehicle as usual, kids went up to him and said they saw a flying saucers, he said as a joke don’t say that too loud or you will he locked up." [Westall Facebook, Aug 17, 2020]
Witnesses report (with varying degrees of uncertainty) Army, Air Force, men in suits, and other authorities arriving at the school from within 20 minutes to 2 hours. Again, their speedy arrival would be expected because they'd already be on alert with the intention of covering up this near-disaster. Shane Ryan learned that fire trucks from Oakleigh Fire Station attended at the Grange (recall that battery fires can set fire to the ground on landing - perhaps there was a grass fire) [Westall Facebook, Aug 17, 2020], and a freelance reporter said he failed to reach the school because the roads were sealed off by men he believes were officers from the Commonwealth Police. [Westall Facebook, Nov 25, 2011]
Witness Rob N (who believes he saw a balloon that day) has another explanation for why an Army presence was reported. He had a very sick brother, and his father would pick him up from school to visit the hospital every day. "On UFO day he picked me up as usual wearing his uniform and driving an Army vehicle as usual, kids went up to him and said they saw a flying saucers, he said as a joke don’t say that too loud or you will he locked up." [Westall Facebook, Aug 17, 2020]
Where did the payload end up?
Since the witnesses found nothing at the Grange minutes after seeing something apparently land there, it’s likely the actual landing site was elsewhere. Even if the balloon appeared to go down in the northwest corner of the Grange, it would have been difficult for observers at the school to know how far behind the pine trees it really was. The balloon probably blew elsewhere, and the payload could have been dragged across the fields by its parachute caught in the wind. [Thorn, 2021, p.21, 30]
One possibility is that the parachute and payload ended up a few hundred meters to the southeast, near the factory on Eileen Rd.
Shane Ryan reports that workers on Eileen Rd saw over the back fence of their factory "what appeared to be a circle" of burnt grass, 15 metres in diameter. A barricade was put up, manned by soldiers, and over the next day or so trucks and a bulldozer were seen, and "large amounts of top soil and grass were being dug up and carted away." [Westall Facebook, Dec 30, 2017] He also spoke to the children of the owner of a local bulldozer hire company who was "called upon, by someone, to go over to The Grange with a bulldozer and a slasher to remove any evidence of whatever had landed there." [Westall Facebook, Dec 30, 2017]
Recall that battery fires sometimes happened when the payload hit the ground. This may have caused the burnt area the factory workers saw. Slashing the entire area would disguise this, as well as any other damage done by the Hibal components when they landed. If the soil was feared contaminated by, for example, heavy metals or a radiation leak from the damaged payload, removing the top soil was the remedy.
Next up: Aside from the spontaneous RAAF training exercise, what was their role in covering up what happened at Westall?
One possibility is that the parachute and payload ended up a few hundred meters to the southeast, near the factory on Eileen Rd.
Shane Ryan reports that workers on Eileen Rd saw over the back fence of their factory "what appeared to be a circle" of burnt grass, 15 metres in diameter. A barricade was put up, manned by soldiers, and over the next day or so trucks and a bulldozer were seen, and "large amounts of top soil and grass were being dug up and carted away." [Westall Facebook, Dec 30, 2017] He also spoke to the children of the owner of a local bulldozer hire company who was "called upon, by someone, to go over to The Grange with a bulldozer and a slasher to remove any evidence of whatever had landed there." [Westall Facebook, Dec 30, 2017]
Recall that battery fires sometimes happened when the payload hit the ground. This may have caused the burnt area the factory workers saw. Slashing the entire area would disguise this, as well as any other damage done by the Hibal components when they landed. If the soil was feared contaminated by, for example, heavy metals or a radiation leak from the damaged payload, removing the top soil was the remedy.
Next up: Aside from the spontaneous RAAF training exercise, what was their role in covering up what happened at Westall?
Sources
- Chalker, B. (1996). “The Westall school sensation” in The Oz Files. Duffy and Snellgrove.
- Clayton Calendar (Term 1, 1966). Eyewitness account of a flying saucer [Newsletter of former Clayton Primary School]. Retrieved from Project1947, Source 10.
- Close Encounters Down Under (2023). [TV show, Discovery Canada, 7PLUS Australia]
- Dandenong Journal (1966, Apr 21). Flying Saucer Mystery Deepens: Who were 5 pilots? p.1.
- Dandenong Journal (1966, Apr 28). Letters: Mystery Solution? p.21.
- Gardam, S. (2017, Mar 16). BRIEF 04 Encounters Close to Home [Video]. YouTube. (Features unused footage from Westall '66, dir. Rosie Jones.)
- Halperin, D. (2016, Jul 15). The Westall UFO – A Teacher’s Testimony (Part 1) [Blog]
- Jones, R. (Director). (2010). Westall '66 [Film]. Endangered Pictures.
- Kibel, J. (1966, c.Jun). [Audio letter to James E McDonald]. Arizona Archives Online.
- McDonald, J.E. (1967, Jun 28). [Recorded interview with Andrew Greenwood]. Retrieved from YouTube.
- McDonald, J.E. (1968, Jul 29). Statement of unidentified flying objects submitted to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics. Retrieved from The Computer UFO Network.
- McMahon, J. (2019, Sep 25). Joy Clarke - In The Sky - Westall 1966 (Extended Witness Interview) [Video]. YouTube.
- Mitchell, N. (Host). (2022, May 19). 3AW Mornings with Neil Mitchell [Audio podcast episode]. Omni Studio.
- Thorn, S. (2021). Project Hibal. Self-published. (Available on Amazon Kindle and National Library of Australia Trove)
- VUFOA-TV Victorian UFO Action (2017, Apr 15). WESTALL The Witnesses Speak Conference Presented By VUFOA (April 2, 2017) [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.]
- Willis, Martin (2020, Sep 6). Paul Dean, Possible UFO Detection Documents through FOIA and More! on Martin Willis Live Shows [Video]. YouTube.
(c) Charlie Wiser 2022
