When mysterious objects were seen in the skies
above a school oval and paddock in a small town in south east Melbourne
52 years ago, local authorities reportedly told witnesses to keep quiet. To this day, residents and interested parties
remain baffled by what took place that day, with conspiracy theories
pointing to a government cover-up rather than an extra-terrestrial
visit.
It was around lunchtime on Wednesday,
April 6, 1966, when students and staff from Westall High School and
Westall State School, in Clayton South, spilled out onto the local oval
for sport.
As
the students went about their exercises, hundreds of them claim to have
witnessed unexplained objects flying overhead before disappearing into a
nearby grassy paddock known as The Grange.
“I
think we were all just stunned. They were all hovering,” Phyll Tierney,
who was among the students out on the oval that day, told nine.com.au.
Ms
Tierney, who was 15 at the time of the sighting, said she remembers
seeing three silver disc, dish-like shaped objects with a dome at the
top in the sky. She claims none of them made a sound.
“There were two others as well but they were quite a way over the other side of the oval,” she said.
“It was the sort of the thing that you read about but never happened to you.”
If
the sightings weren’t enough to spook the students – two were
reportedly taken off in an ambulance – they were gathered in the school
grounds and told to tell no one of the incident. It was shortly after
that the military arrived.
“It was so covered
up. We weren’t allowed to talk to the media. They told us all to go to
the quadrangle, the headmaster was adamant that we’d seen nothing,” she
said.
Shane Ryan, a Canberra researcher and an enthusiast of the Westall incident,
backs up Ms Tierney’s claims having spoken with more than 400 people
who claim to have witnessed the incident and subsequent stern visits
from authorities.
“When they saw these objects
they knew straight away that it wasn’t anything ordinary. It was
inexplicable to them,” Mr Ryan told nine.com.au.
“They referred it to it at the time as a flying saucer, that is what it looked like to them.”
He
was quick to add the description of the object didn’t mean it was
extra-terrestrial, though he does believe the incident is a “UFO story”.
“When you talk about UFO stories it is lights in
the sky and one or two people seeing something unusual but this was
broad daylight, witnessed by hundreds of people and seen to come down or
be close to the ground,” he said.
Mr Ryan said
witnesses have told him that within 20 to 30 minutes after the sightings
“the military and the police were on the scene” as well as two separate
fire brigades.
“One of the students was very affected by what she had seen. She was taken away,” he said.
“The
civil defence organisation, the precursor to the state emergency
service, was set up to help (in the event of a) major disaster or
radiation leak. They were responded and came out to the Grange. It was a
pretty big thing.”
However, he claims that
part of this “enduring mystery” is the lack of evidence that any of the
authorities were called to respond to the school oval that day.
“We still can’t find the document trail that links they services out there that day. There’s absolutely nothing,” he said.
“The grass was normally about two or three foot
high in this paddock and when we climbed through the fence there was
three flattened spots singed around the edge. The grass was absolutely
flattered. There were three swirling disc in the middle.
“It’s what we found and nothing at all could deter us from saying any different.”
Yet,
in the 52 years since the incident there appear to be no answer to what
happened. While Mr Ryan continues to be contacted by witnesses to this
day, he is yet to find an answer to what happened.
“Seems
to be that something went wrong that day at Westall that some rule or
some protocol or even some law was broken that day,” Mr Ryan said.
“What
I mean is that something went wrong, either of in terms of the object
was never meant to have been seen, or if it was something truly exotic,
not from Australia then what got broken I guess was the fact that nobody
was in control that nobody could explain what people saw.
“Maybe
the answer is that there is no answer. It’s that not knowing, that has
to be kept quiet because for some people that would be concerning.”
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