UFO Reporter - Volume 1, Number 3 (September 1992)
UFO Reporter - Volume 1, Number 3 (September 1992)
September 1992
Triangular UFO in NZ
Air tremors along coast
1992 east coast flap -
part II
UFO Reporter
Volume 1 Number 3
ISSN 1038-1015
September 1992
1992 UFO Research
New South Wales. All
rights revert to contributors
upon publication.
Published quarterly.
Features
6
10
12
15
East coast flap of 1992- Part II Sowiak-Rudej, Sinclair, Vickery & McGhee
Also
3
Editorial -
Early days
Mystery booms
19
29
30
31
Editorial Committee:
Bryan Dickeson, Evelayn
Hoctor, and Coralee Vickery.
The views expressed in
this publication are those
of the individual authors,
and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors of UFO Research
(NSV\1).
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Editorial
Early days:
Rosemary, George and me
Bryan Dickeson
September 1992
Editorial
D
D
D
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Letters
Timothy Good
20 November 1992
September 1992
tlements of the Central Coastit was heard and felt at The Entrance, Terrigal, and so on.
According to a 2GB radio
news bulletin at the time, some
damage was recorded from this
'phantom quake'. However, and
interestingly enough, no earth
tremors were recorded in any of
the seismological centres at Sydney, Newcastle, or Canberra (at
the time of the sonic boom).
However, an earth tremor
did occur at Taree, some time
later; this was recorded by seismographs and was reported in
the print media.
We should remember that
noctuTnlll lights were reported
before and after the Newcastle
quake of December 1989, and
thatthereweremanyUFOsightings reported in the Newcastle
and Hunter Valley area during
1988.
It is possible that geotectonic
changes in the Hunter Valley
and the unstable seismic fault
line bordering Newcastle Harbour have produced a number
of these recent UFO reports in
that region.Most sightings witnessed in 1988 and again this
year, were of amorphous conglomerates of light with no discernible
features
presumably ET spaceships
would need to be more highly
structured.
There seems to be sufficient
correlation between the recent
Newcastle and Taree tremors
and the latest anomalous aerial
phenomena over that region of
NSW to warrant such an alternative to the ET hypothesis.
While the geophysical hypothesis might not be the magical key for solving all UFO
KT (Burwood)
21 December 1992
The 'May 1992 skyquake' and afew
of the questions it raises, are discussed in some detail next in this
issue-Eds
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Air quakes
book of Unusual Natural Phenome:na (revised and expanded edition, Anchor Press 1983), William R.
Corliss describes a series of possibly similar detonations heard and felt along fue East Coast of North
America in 1978-79 ('The East Coast Mystery Booms').
Similar booms were reported from England, California, and Canada at fue same time.
Firstly, two loud detonations were reported from
Charleston, Soufu Carolina on2 December 1978, while
New Jersey reported one boom later fuat afternoon.
'Thirteen days later Charleston was rocked by five
more booms, and explosions were heard and felt off
fue coast of Nova Scotia. On 20 December Charleston
had two more explosions, and New Jersey, one. More
followed in the differentlocations on22 and30 December andonS, 12, and 18 January' (New Scientist, 77:341,
1978). Luminous phenomena accompanied a few of
fue explosions.
There were literally hundreds of newspaper reports at fue time. Police switchboards lit up wifu reports of loud booms and shaking homes from local
residents.
Atmospheric scientists suggested fuat supersonic
(SST) flights by Concorde planes were responsible, but
these were discounted by a geophysicist at fue
Lamont-Doherty Observatory operating several pressure-recording instruments during fuat period- the
sounds were unlike any other SST signals the station
had recorded, and seemed to originate from the south.
The American 'East Coast Booms' have not been
explained to everyone's satisfaction since.
Corliss's book includes numerous good examples
of mysterious atmospheric booms from various parts
of fue world, from earlier times (several accounts come
from Australia), and is well worth referring to. 0
Air quakes
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UFO REPORTER
ALIEN ABDUCTION
ALL COTTON T- SIDRTS in S, M, L, XL, S 20.oo
September 1992
UPERS, Christchurch NZ
This account of an unusual object may be similar to trangular UFOs reported from Belgium around the same time.
Three
Cass Bay youths report watching a
UFO above Lyttelton Harbour early Saturday morning, 16 November 1991 for
a period of about a quarter of an hour.
Shad almost returned home to Harbour View Terrace at 1.24 am, after
walking a friend back to their place,
when he noticed an unusual series of
extremely bright lights southwest of
Cass Bay.
At first he thought the lights were
car lights from a vehicle travelling along
Governors Bay Road and rounding the
bluff between Cass Bay and Rapaki they were coming from the southwest,
II
bright white
spot\lghts
Sugarloaf
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in November 1991, and appeared to be
perfectly genuine. D
Banks
Peninsula is a cluster of old, eroded
volcanoes, and Lyttelton Harbour (the busy
port for the city of Christchurch nearby) is a
caldera - that is, the crater of an extinct volcano that has been breached and flooded by the
sea.
The harbour itself is surrounded by steep
mountains, 400-550 m high. Small settlements
such as Cass Bay and Governors Bay are built
on low-lying seaside bluffs, or the fertile alluvial fans washed out by small streams. Homes
- - -<:<el~':? rim
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496 m -._...-...._-
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6
September 1992
Waverley Park
The obseroer is a nine-year old boy from Dover Heights, personally known to Paul and considered to be a reliable
witness.
,,
Bondi Junclion
Grandsland
Waverley
Park
CNal
10
Waverley Park
.
Just past the grandstand, the object
increased its altitude by making a series
of reguler 5 m 'steps', vertically and
horizontally, until it was about 80m up
in the air. It was still travelling northwest overall.
The disc carried on past where Jwas
standing, just north of the playground,
to a point north-west of Waverley Park
which would very nearly coincide with
the intersection of the Bondi Bypass,
and Old South Head Road (two very
busy roads). The disc thenhesitatedand
changed direction to move due east, out
to sea.
J last saw the object disappearing
seawards. He estimated that the object
had only been in his view for about 10
seconds.
South-west of the playground is a
concrete stairway up a steeply-sloped
mound some 10 m high. The western
side of this mound contains at least one
large underground reservoir. The top of
the mound is flattened with a squat, Sm
high, cylindrical reservoir building.
This round 'tower' is positioned in the
very centre of Waverley Park and has a
tall radio mast on its northeastern side
- the main structure looks a bit like a
concrete wedding cake, with arches and
windows around the sides (the grand
stairway and reservoir tower are builtin
the elaborate style often preferred by
civil engineers of the 1920s and 30s).
The grassy hill is surrounded by
trees, and its pink and ochre tower make
pink-red
grey body
'I
0
September 1992
~
"I::mcrJ;rtlcy! Amlrcunula IV! We ha~< bern captuudJ"
11
This incident was notified to the UFO Rhotline within hours ofit occurring -we were able to interoiew the witnesses
within a week. Some aspects of the case are still being investigated, so parts of this account are incomplete.
Qn Monday 6 July 1992 at 2110 hrs, M and
her fiance C were driving northeast
through Glenfield heading towards
home. M was driving.
While approaching their turnoff
south-eastwards from Railway Parade
into Salisbury A venue, they noticed a
cluster of extremely bright lights some
distance behind the line of trees to the
east of Railway Parade. (These trees
form an irregular windbreak along the
western perimeter of the Seddon Park
playing field.)
At first M and C thought the lights
were the night-lights for the sports field
itself - Seddon Park has several tall
metal towers with arrays of powerful,
white quartz-halogen lamps for night
practice. However, on this Monday
night, the lights seemed to be out of
position; they were down too low beSide view:
~ yellow/white
R ~red
B ~blue
equatorial
groove
l
pale blue
metallic body
',
I '
'
y
, r
y
R
R'
meters
0~---L----~--~----~---J
12
'
September 1992
Back view:
B
orangy-yellow
triangular grids
metres
13
/
3. First object hovered
{over lnglebum Camp)
./
./
,.
(Holsworthy
mililary
reserve)
lnglebum
Mmtary
Camp
obj~cts
in
c~------~7----L------------~~
km
14
Part II
The second and final part of this article describes two of the nwre complex and intriguing events investigated in
New South Wales.
September 1992
15
white
red
):----~::----:-'
10
Rgure 1
.to
metres
White
oo
red
Figure 2
16
lights positioned within the circumference. The overall outline of the craft
above this ring of lights was similar to
that of a conventional aeroplane - a
very large one, bigger than a 'jumbo jet'
(over 130 metres long? Later calculations from angular measurements suggested the object was 165 15 metres
long).
The 'jumbo' was seen to slowly rotate horizontally (clockwise, as viewed
from below). There were other small
lights - blue, green, red, orange and
white moving around the 'aeroplane'
edges and wings, and in the air nearby
- these were much smaller and dimmer. When the 'jumbo' started to move
away, these subsidiary lights around
the wings all switched off simultaneously, so that it looked like a large disc
again.
The 'jumbo' seemed to have the
right sort of bumps and shapes where
there should be jet engines, but there
were no flames or exhaust visible and
there was no obvious noise while it hovered above the beach. Itcertainlywasn't
a helicopter.
The two fishermen flashed a torch
at this object three times. It promptly
flashed two extremely bright white
searchlight beams from its 'nose section' three times in reply, back onto the
fishermen below, and then veered off
northwestwards.
Two of the witnesses ran across the
beach towards the fishermen, waving
their arms excitedly at the 'jumbo'. As it
passed overhead, the 'jumbo' also
brightly spotlit them and the surrounding section of beach for several seconds.
It moved off northwestwards, following the same path as the first object
(towards Munmorah Power Station).
The 'jumbo' accelerated greatly as it
went and quickly disappeared into the
distance.
The next object from the line (the
seventh they saw pass directly overhead), was identical to the smaller objects before it and followed the same
flight path (veering northwest) as the
first object
September 1992
~:$o,ldiers Point
~~)fdiers
Beach
km
17
eo\
plano nighlpolh
..
\ ..
\
Figure 3
orange
body
/O
1--------r------_:..:;
Agure 4
18
melres
September 1992
graph.
When you take into account the raw wire
reports from which the basic story evolved, it's
doubtful that the picture newspaper readers
were given was very accurate the essential
details were treated rather casually; for example:
A UFO sighting [occurred] around Soldiers
Point and across Budgewoi Lake last night
with more than a dozen calls to Toukley
and Wyongpolice stations. The object travelled at very high speed, turning night into
day.
Police say some callers were quite shaken
by the experience and appeared genuine.
One woman at Green Point said she was
woken by the intensity of the light shimmering across the Lake.
19
20
September 1992
21
22
Other than a helicopter, flying 20 kilometres out to sea, official sources said no other
aircraft are known to have been in the area
at the time of the sightings. The same
sources were also unable to comment on a
report that a US experimental 'lifting body'
craft had been conducting night time test
flights in the area.
(Central Coast Sun Weekly the 'paper with personality', 30 April 6 May 1992)
The UFO topic continued to emerge from
time to time in the following weeks:
September 1992
23
The latest reports followed a spate of sightings on Apri128. Toukley and Wyong Police Stations took more than 15 calls from
Toukley, Budgewoi, Norah Head and
Rocky Point.
(Central Coast Express, Friday 15 May 1992)
The interest created finally encouraged one
brave journalist to provide the following, personal UFO account
Hovering white lights: a close encounter on
the Central Coast
The skies appear to have been very active
of late.
For the past couple of weeks, several reports of unusual and often inexplicable
lights in the evening sky have come from
the Central Coast area. Sightings have also
been made in Brisbane and Sydney.
But the people who publicly acknowledge
and describe their experiences find themselves the subject of ridicule and derision.
I should know. I am one of those people.
But I simply cannot forget my recent 'encounter', and cannot accept thatwhat I saw
was part of an RAAF exercise.
It happened as my husband and I were
returning from Sydney on Sunday, May 3.
It all began as we were driving north along
the expressway, about 40 km before the
Cessnock-Maitland turnoff. It was about 6
p.m. and the sky was quite dark and very
clear. I could see quite a few aircraft heading in various directions.
Suddenly, a vibrant white light appeared
not far above us and to our right It was
flashing intermittently. Below it was a faint
display of green and red lights, and my
immediate thought was that they extended
much wider than those on a normal aircraft.
But the really strange thing about the light
was that it seemed not to move. It appeared
to be hovering.
An aircraft approaching, we thought But
it remained the same size and seemed really
quite close. It remained in position for at
least three minutes, possibly more. When
these experiences occur, you don't think
immediately that you should be noticing
details.
24
'
September 1992
25
26
September 1992
Herald:
Sky-watching Professor Colin Keay, of
Newcastle University, is intrigued about a
remarkable coincidence to do with the recent rash of UFO sightings. The latest sighting was Monday's mystery red lights over
Newcastle. 'The number of telephone calls
I've taken started to rise five to seven weeks
ago. That was immediately after the TV
stations each ran what I call 'beat up' programs on reported flying saucer sightings,'
he said.
(The Newcastle Herald, 'Topics' column with
Mike Scanlon, 27 May 1992)
Once the 'kite' ploy failed, it was back to the
'misguided witness' approach. Professor Colin
Keay is the Associate Professor of Physics at the
University of Newcastle, and an astronomer.
He is also the President of the Hunter Region
branch of Australian Skeptics and a regular
contributor to The Skeptic. Mike Scanlon did not
bother to point this out to his readers. Perhaps
this would have made this apparently casual
contribution seem less casual. It is also a pity
that Professor Keay did not take up a unique
opportunity to do some field investigations on
UFOs.
27
28
NPML
The laboratory must also develop novel, fast measurement devices for
this new type of technology, and will attract considerable attention from
members of the the international science and research community. Nikola
Tesla fans, take note! 0
September 1992
29
UFO organisations
7002
UFOR(Qld)
PO Box111
NORTHQUAY Qld4002
UFOR(Qld) Ipswich Branch
POBox196
BOOVAL Qld 4305
30
UFOR(FNQ)
POBox1585
CAIRNS Qld 4878
Help wanted!
Overseas
Review
Fifteen
years after the disappearance of pilot Frederick Valentich
over Bass Strait, a critically-acclaimed Australian drama replays the UFO encounter and its
repercussions for Sydney audiences.
The lights are dimmed over
an empty stage. A giant wing is
suspended in the air. Music begins- an old song suggesting a
fondness for a past way of life.
Slides of a growing boy and his
parents play against the giant
wing.
Then the tape plays a conversation between pilot and Air
Traffic control- this is the last
conversation of Frederick Valentich so familiar to many UFO investigators.
So begins Sky, a critically acclaimed one-man play inspired
by Australia's most famous UFO
case - the 1978 disappearance
of pilot Frederick Valentich over
Bass Strait.
On 21 October 1978, the 20year old pilot was flying a single
engined Cessna 182 aircraft from
Melbourne to King Island some
140 km to the south. The reasons
Valentich gave for the flight
were to log more night-flying
time, and to pick up some crayfish from local fishermen.
At 7.06 pm Valentich radioed Melbourne Air Flight Service and asked if there was 'any
known traffic' in his area. There
wasn't. Valentich described a
large aircraft with four bright
lights passing 1000 feet above
him.
September 1992
31
apparently, is a conservative
estimate. It is quite simply a
modern epidemic.
People aren't supposed to
disappear. It makes all of us
nervous. As well as the grief,
their families are forced to
deal with ridicule, trickery,
blame and innuendo. Their
lives, not surprisingly, are
usually devastated. They are
often good and decent people who deserve better from
fate and from us.
Because of this theme, Sky
was chosen to be part of the 1992
Missing Persons Week.
The issue of dealing with
'ridicule, trickery, blame and innuendo' also indicates the fate of
many UFO witnesses. It should
make all sides of the UFO subject
pause to seriously consider the
ethical implications of their activities.
The play finishes with a
deafening noise and a flash of
green light as the pilot encounters his end.
The Department of Transport selectively released its
sparsely-detailed'Aircraft Accident Investigation Summary Reporf, dated 26 April 1983. The
report stated the degree of darnage to the aircraft was 'not
known', and the degree of injury
was 'presumed fatal'. It concluded: 'the reason for the disappearance of the aircraft has
not been determined'.
There are obvious shortcomings in the Valentich case
which weaken it more than
many UFO enthusiasts are prepared to admit. The missing airplane means that the most vital
physical evidence is lacking.
The missing pilot means that
even the central UFO witness
has never been interviewed.
The hoax-suicide explanation cannot be ruled out either.
Mark Moravec,
Anomaly Research Centre,
Victoria
Addendum:
Kyeemagh UFO,
1992
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