The Grange near Westall High School, where a UFO was said to land in 1966 (Source: late '60s student film)
Did the authorities conspire to fool hundreds of Australian schoolchildren into thinking they’d seen flying saucers, all to avoid a PR disaster when a high-altitude scientific balloon almost sent its 300kg payload with secret instrumentation crashing into a schoolyard during recess?
QUICK READ
For those with short attention spans, click the flying saucer for a summary of these pages on Westall.
The case
On Wednesday April 6, 1966 (two days before Good Friday and the Easter break), at morning recess in a semi-rural high school* in south-eastern Australia, hundreds of schoolchildren and at least one teacher watched one, two, or three UFOs flying overhead. One disappeared behind trees into an area known as the Grange. Some children climbed the fence and raced across paddocks only to find the flying saucer had gone - it had shot up into the sky where it played cat-and-mouse with several light aircraft, displaying physics-defying maneuvers before vanishing.
Circles of flattened grass were found at the Grange and nearby locations. Military personnel were seen in the area. The headmaster told the children not to speak to the media or talk about flying saucers. Some witnesses were warned by men in suits, and the teacher's job was threatened.
The cover-up has confirmed in the minds of many that this was a genuine extra-terrestrial event or secret technology that was unknown at the time and remains so.
Circles of flattened grass were found at the Grange and nearby locations. Military personnel were seen in the area. The headmaster told the children not to speak to the media or talk about flying saucers. Some witnesses were warned by men in suits, and the teacher's job was threatened.
The cover-up has confirmed in the minds of many that this was a genuine extra-terrestrial event or secret technology that was unknown at the time and remains so.
- *Westall High School included Forms 1 to 4 (approx. age 12-16). Now called Westall Secondary College, it is located 20km (13mi) southeast of Melbourne, Australia. Westall Primary School (then called Westall State) is on the same property.
- The Grange is a reserve south of the school, a straight-line distance of 600m from the high school buildings to the location where the UFO is said to have landed (or 300m from the southern border of the school grounds to the northern border of the Grange). The reserve was much larger in 1966 than it is today. A former student describes the Grange as "an infamous spot" where couples made out on the back seats of dumped cars, trail bikes zoomed around the tracks, and the kids imagined that the abandoned house in the middle of the forest was haunted.
- Moorabbin Airport is 5km (3mi) to the southwest of the school.
The problem with witness testimonies
Joy' s drawings of what she saw
Throughout these pages I've highlighted only a few of the many inconsistencies between witness accounts and within individual witness accounts over the years, when the contradictions are important. This is not intended as an attack on the witnesses' integrity. Many have themselves admitted to incomplete or uncertain memories. My aim is not to discredit witnesses or change their minds. My aim is to present and test a hypothesis that may explain what happened, and why.
The story, a "cold case", came into the public eye after researcher Shane Ryan created a Yahoo group (now a Facebook group) in 2005 to bring witnesses together, followed in 2010 by a documentary, Westall '66 (dir. Rosie Jones), featuring interviews as well as information that indicated some sort of cover-up due to there being no official documents about the event.
Analysis of what really happened at Westall can never progress as long as all adult witness testimonies are accepted indiscriminately. Contradictions mean that some testimonies simply do not represent reality, no matter how fiercely a witness may hold on to their version of events. While for the most part we only have each witness's decades-old memories, there are four witness testimonies from close to the time of the event:
Purely as an example of how memories change, look at how Joy's drawings of the UFO evolved over the years. Aside from the visual differences, in 1966 she described seeing two UFOs: "circular, round on top, flat on bottom", which matches all her drawings. But in 2017 she drew a group of three UFOs (one shown here), and in 2022 she described them as "a cup upside-down on a saucer", which only matches the middle drawing.
Looking at Joy's drawings and testimony, or comparing hers with those of other witnesses, we have so many variations and contradictions that at least some of this information must be wrong. The simplest and most blatant of all is that Greenwood and some witnesses say a girl interrupted his science class yelling about flying saucers, but other witnesses say it was a boy. While this fact doesn't change the case, it illustrates how memories become distorted. We also have some witnesses insisting a UFO landed on the school oval (which was, at the time, full of children in a PE class), while others adamantly deny it.
Andrew Greenwood's memories of what he witnessed also changed over the course of 50 years, culminating in him speaking on camera for the first time to director James Fox: "It was silver, it could hover, it could move slowly, it could move very rapidly. Eventually it moved away to the other side of the oval and down behind some pine trees." [The Phenomenon, 2020; filmed in 2017] Yet in 1966 the object he witnessed was never stationary (i.e. did not hover), and he never saw it go behind the trees. Both these observations are other witness accounts that he's absorbed into his own. And, via Shane Ryan: "he thinks his original description at the time is the best guide to what he saw." [Westall Yahoo, Sep 3, 2005]
The problem is that we don't always know which information is wrong. What we can safely say is that memories do not improve with time. It makes sense to place more weight on the earlier testimonies.
The fallibility of memory is not the only barrier to piecing the story back together. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, and one reason is that our perceptions are colored by our assumptions. For example, Greenwood ascribes motivations to the UFO and the planes overhead by saying they were playing a cat-and- mouse game. Paul S says of his sighting: "It was as if [the object] had been observing what was going on, and because I’d spotted it, it started changing." If a witness assumes something is acting with intent, it may appear to act with intent.
An experiencer of an unusual event is likely to say: "I know what I saw!" Generally, the evidence shows this is not the case (see colored box below). When testing any hypothesis about Westall, some testimonies will have to be discarded if the truth is ever to emerge. It is logically impossible to reconcile them all. We must accept that perception is inaccurate and colored by our assumptions, and that memories change. When a hypothesis is found that's a good fit for most of the evidence, it is therefore invalid to protest that it doesn't take into consideration this or that particular account (especially when those accounts are recent).
The story, a "cold case", came into the public eye after researcher Shane Ryan created a Yahoo group (now a Facebook group) in 2005 to bring witnesses together, followed in 2010 by a documentary, Westall '66 (dir. Rosie Jones), featuring interviews as well as information that indicated some sort of cover-up due to there being no official documents about the event.
Analysis of what really happened at Westall can never progress as long as all adult witness testimonies are accepted indiscriminately. Contradictions mean that some testimonies simply do not represent reality, no matter how fiercely a witness may hold on to their version of events. While for the most part we only have each witness's decades-old memories, there are four witness testimonies from close to the time of the event:
- science teacher Andrew Greenwood spoke to the local press (Apr 21, 1966) and did two longer interviews in mid-1966 (for which we have only a second-hand account from James Kibel), and in 1967 (with James McDonald, American UFO researcher)
- student Joy T filed a report with a UFO research group on Thursday, Apr 7, 1966
- student Marilyn E spoke to the press and made a drawing, published Apr 21, 1966
- student Jeff H wrote an article in a school newsletter, published within weeks of the event.
Purely as an example of how memories change, look at how Joy's drawings of the UFO evolved over the years. Aside from the visual differences, in 1966 she described seeing two UFOs: "circular, round on top, flat on bottom", which matches all her drawings. But in 2017 she drew a group of three UFOs (one shown here), and in 2022 she described them as "a cup upside-down on a saucer", which only matches the middle drawing.
Looking at Joy's drawings and testimony, or comparing hers with those of other witnesses, we have so many variations and contradictions that at least some of this information must be wrong. The simplest and most blatant of all is that Greenwood and some witnesses say a girl interrupted his science class yelling about flying saucers, but other witnesses say it was a boy. While this fact doesn't change the case, it illustrates how memories become distorted. We also have some witnesses insisting a UFO landed on the school oval (which was, at the time, full of children in a PE class), while others adamantly deny it.
Andrew Greenwood's memories of what he witnessed also changed over the course of 50 years, culminating in him speaking on camera for the first time to director James Fox: "It was silver, it could hover, it could move slowly, it could move very rapidly. Eventually it moved away to the other side of the oval and down behind some pine trees." [The Phenomenon, 2020; filmed in 2017] Yet in 1966 the object he witnessed was never stationary (i.e. did not hover), and he never saw it go behind the trees. Both these observations are other witness accounts that he's absorbed into his own. And, via Shane Ryan: "he thinks his original description at the time is the best guide to what he saw." [Westall Yahoo, Sep 3, 2005]
The problem is that we don't always know which information is wrong. What we can safely say is that memories do not improve with time. It makes sense to place more weight on the earlier testimonies.
The fallibility of memory is not the only barrier to piecing the story back together. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, and one reason is that our perceptions are colored by our assumptions. For example, Greenwood ascribes motivations to the UFO and the planes overhead by saying they were playing a cat-and- mouse game. Paul S says of his sighting: "It was as if [the object] had been observing what was going on, and because I’d spotted it, it started changing." If a witness assumes something is acting with intent, it may appear to act with intent.
An experiencer of an unusual event is likely to say: "I know what I saw!" Generally, the evidence shows this is not the case (see colored box below). When testing any hypothesis about Westall, some testimonies will have to be discarded if the truth is ever to emerge. It is logically impossible to reconcile them all. We must accept that perception is inaccurate and colored by our assumptions, and that memories change. When a hypothesis is found that's a good fit for most of the evidence, it is therefore invalid to protest that it doesn't take into consideration this or that particular account (especially when those accounts are recent).
The PR Disaster hypothesis
Once we’ve accepted that eyewitness accounts are inaccurate and memories change, we can re-evaluate Keith Basterfield’s Hibal hypothesis (Hibal = high altitude balloon) [Basterfield, 2013]. I’ve assembled his research and added new information that’s come to light since. I’ve addressed the rebuttals and theorized plausible possibilities for each stage of the Westall event.
I'm calling this synthesis of ideas the PR Disaster hypothesis, for reasons that will become clear. (PR = public relations.) It explains why the authorities reacted as they did - arriving quickly on the scene, cordoning off the area, shutting down talk, and possibly threatening some adult witnesses. This heavy-handed, mysterious approach left the witnesses angry and confused. They knew they’d seen something - something that apparently needed to be covered up. Many have concluded that what they witnessed was advanced physics-defying technology, perhaps extra-terrestrial (collectively called "flying saucers" on these pages).
I will also be highlighting the testimonies of witnesses who believe what they saw was not unusual. They feel their voices have been shouted down or ignored, with filmmakers and reporters uninterested in anyone who doesn’t think they saw flying saucers.
Explore each step with the evidence by clicking the links at the top of every page. It will make more sense if you do this in the correct order. Below is a summary of the PR Disaster hypothesis, which is expanded on the following pages. The Quick Read presents the main points without the supporting evidence.
I'm calling this synthesis of ideas the PR Disaster hypothesis, for reasons that will become clear. (PR = public relations.) It explains why the authorities reacted as they did - arriving quickly on the scene, cordoning off the area, shutting down talk, and possibly threatening some adult witnesses. This heavy-handed, mysterious approach left the witnesses angry and confused. They knew they’d seen something - something that apparently needed to be covered up. Many have concluded that what they witnessed was advanced physics-defying technology, perhaps extra-terrestrial (collectively called "flying saucers" on these pages).
I will also be highlighting the testimonies of witnesses who believe what they saw was not unusual. They feel their voices have been shouted down or ignored, with filmmakers and reporters uninterested in anyone who doesn’t think they saw flying saucers.
Explore each step with the evidence by clicking the links at the top of every page. It will make more sense if you do this in the correct order. Below is a summary of the PR Disaster hypothesis, which is expanded on the following pages. The Quick Read presents the main points without the supporting evidence.
Summary of the PR Disaster Hypothesis
NOT A WEATHER BALLOON
- Project HIBAL was a scientific balloon program in Mildura, run by the Department of Supply from 1961, that sent enormous translucent balloons with heavy payloads of equipment into the stratosphere. These balloons do not resemble weather balloons.
- There are numerous accounts of Hibal traveling hundreds of kilometers and staying aloft longer than the anticipated 2 to 8 hours.
- A Hibal balloon was launched on April 5, 1966, the day before the Westall sighting. On the morning of April 6, a separate UFO sighting 40km NE of Westall was almost certainly this balloon which had for some reason failed to drop its payload on time and self-destruct. Instead it drifted south overnight towards Melbourne.
- Hibal was not a secret program, but "special launchings" - possibly including the April 5 flight - had secret equipment from NASA in the payload. This may have influenced the overblown "cover-up" when the balloon malfunctioned.
I KNOW WHAT I SAW (in 2 parts)
The Westall event is divided into two parts. It's likely they were caused by two completely different objects:
I KNOW WHAT I SAW (PART 1): And it wasn't a weather balloon
The Westall event is divided into two parts. It's likely they were caused by two completely different objects:
- Part 1: UFO(s) seen floating over the school yard before going “behind the pines” to apparently land at the Grange, before apparently rising up again. This was witnessed by students on the school oval and from the back fence of the school grounds.
- Part 2: A “cat-and-mouse” chase between one UFO and up to five light aircraft, which Andrew Greenwood described in detail at the time, followed by the immediate aftermath when some students ran to the Grange.
I KNOW WHAT I SAW (PART 1): And it wasn't a weather balloon
- What the witnesses saw in part 1 has been described as unlike anything they'd ever seen. However, there is no evidence they knew (or know now) what the components of a Hibal at the end of its mission look like.
- Other witnesses recognized what they were seeing was a deflated balloon.
- Initial eyewitness accounts resemble the appearance and movements of a deflating Hibal balloon (that is, a balloon with a slow leak) and possibly also its detached parachute and payload descending at the end of the mission, and possibly the arrival of a chase plane.
- Initial accounts do not describe physics-defying behavior. They do not claim the object "shot up" from the Grange with extraordinary acceleration, which is a later embellishment perhaps inspired by the confusion created when another UFO appeared high in the sky in the second half of the event.
I KNOW WHAT I SAW (PART 2): Cat-and-mouse chase
- Andrew Greenwood's detailed account of his sighting, including the apparent rapid acceleration of the UFO, resembles an aerial training exercise where light aircraft chase a wind sock for target practice.
- It’s possible the timing and location of this exercise was not a coincidence, but a cover to distract from the "other" UFO, a crashing Hibal balloon and payload.
- The quick arrival of the ground crew to retrieve the Hibal was normal procedure. Likewise, the authorities probably had advance warning.
- Since the witnesses found no Hibal components at the Grange minutes after seeing something apparently land there, it’s likely the actual landing site was further south.
THE COVER-UP: A PR disaster
- Headmaster Mr Samblebe told the students and teachers to stop talking about flying saucers because he did not believe in them, and because he disapproved of the chaos created by the sighting.
- The authorities interviewed the first students who went over the fence to check what they had seen. They allegedly warned adult witnesses not to talk. This fueled the rumors that flying saucers had been seen.
- The RAAF may have had a policy to fake UFO investigations as cover for other activities (such as retrieving embarrassing runaway Hibal balloons). This may explain the aerial training exercise and the many personnel seen at various sites.
- During 1966, an extension to Project HIBAL was being negotiated between the Australian and US governments. A near-miss at a school would be disastrous PR and probably increased the motivation to cover it up.
THE CIRCLES: Circles do not indicate landing sites
- There have been so many circles reported, even in locations where no UFO was seen to land, that the only logical conclusion is: circles do not indicate landing sites.
- The circles initially described were not perfectly formed, though they may be recalled that way today.
- There are several other explanations for why circles were seen in 1966, or remembered today.
CLOSURE
- My purpose is not to change the witnesses' minds, but to present a plausible hypothesis for what was experienced, in a cohesive readable format.
- The cover-up continues to this day, as no records have been found of anything unusual happening at Westall.
- If the PR Disaster hypothesis is correct: a 300kg payload containing US government instrumentation almost fell on the heads of Australian school children - and yet despite the potentially disastrous risks, Project HIBAL continued dropping its payloads all over Australia for another 15 years.
Thanks
This work is based on the research of several people, particularly the first three below. I list them all here rather than always identifying them along the way for their contributions. Thank you in particular to those generous and enthusiastic researchers who helped me with documents, links, or just talking things through.
Westall witnesses are mostly referred to by first name only. Sources are linked on each page.
- Keith Basterfield
- Paul Dean
- Shane Ryan, George Simpson, Bill Chalker, who have stated that "balloons" and/or HIBAL were not responsible but whose research over the years provided useful data
- Victor Coleiro
- David Halperin
- Westall witnesses Rob N, Peter A, and Jack T, who told me they saw a balloon
- Rosario C, who attended a reunion and talked to witnesses
- Westall witnesses
Westall witnesses are mostly referred to by first name only. Sources are linked on each page.
"I know what I saw!" - or, You don't know what you saw
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An eyewitness filmed and uploaded four disc-shaped UFOs flying in formation over a west Melbourne suburb on March 30, 2022. His description: they were silent, shapeshifting, and suddenly disappeared.
The UFOs were quickly identified (via flight logs and more) as the RAAF Roulettes. Moments after the footage was shot, they can be seen on a live broadcast making their dramatic entrance during a memorial service at Point Cook. The eyewitness realized his mistake and took down the videos, but they were picked up by various YouTube channels to be breathlessly reported on, even days after they’d been “debunked”, including by Third Phase of Moon (timestamped link). The eyewitness thought he had clear footage of shapeshifting discs, when he actually had bad footage of planes. Remember: Eyewitness accounts are unreliable. Human perception can be terrible, including your own, and “wanting to believe” just makes it worse. |
Aerobatics planes perceived as silent, shapeshifting discs
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Is there a photo of the Westall UFO?
The "Balwyn bell" photo by James Johnson Kibel was taken almost 16km (10 mi) to the northeast of Westall, allegedly four days before the Westall sighting although it didn't surface until afterwards. While some investigators and witnesses have attempted to link it to the Westall UFO, the descriptions and drawings from the witnesses bear no resemblance to the bell.
Keith Basterfield and Paul Dean give a balanced investigation of the photograph here. It also looks exactly like a desk bell or pram hubcab (or similar piece of junk) chucked in the air.
To understand why the Balwyn bell photo is a hoax, read: The stupidest UFO photo in Australia
"The photo looks nothing like what was seen that day." [Westall witness Phyll T, Apr 16, 2021, Westall Facebook]
Keith Basterfield and Paul Dean give a balanced investigation of the photograph here. It also looks exactly like a desk bell or pram hubcab (or similar piece of junk) chucked in the air.
To understand why the Balwyn bell photo is a hoax, read: The stupidest UFO photo in Australia
"The photo looks nothing like what was seen that day." [Westall witness Phyll T, Apr 16, 2021, Westall Facebook]
Note: The photo below appears in various places online as the Westall sighting - it is not. A cursory look shows it was taken at night overlooking a city, neither of which matches the Westall sighting. Some witnesses claim a teacher (there is dispute over which one) did take photos and the camera was confiscated, but to this day there are no known photos of the Westall sighting.
Not a photo of the Westall UFO
Sources
- Basterfield, K. (2013). Westall 1966: A new hypothesis. [personal communication]
- Fox, J. (Director). (2020). The Phenomenon [Film]. James Fox Productions, Farah Films. [Westall is covered from 23:45]
- Third Phase of Moon (Apr 7, 2022). Mind Blowing UFO videos that can't be explained! [Repost of the original Roulettes "UFO" footage, timestamped]
- 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
